RANGE 


FREDERICK 
PALMER 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


GIFT 


AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 


BOOKS  BY  FREDERICK  PALMER 

Going  to  War  in  Greece 

The  Ways  of  the  Service 

The  Vagabond 

With  Kuroki  in  Manchuria 

Over  the  Pass 

The  Last  Shot 

My  Year  of  the  Great  War 

The  Old  Blood 

My  Second  Year  of  the  War 

With  Our  Faces  in  the  Light 

America  in  France 


AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 


BY 
MAJOR   FREDERICK  PALMER 

Author  of  "  The  Last  Shot,"  "  My  Year  of  the  Great  War,' 
"  With  Our  Faces  in  the  Light,"  etc. 


NEW  YORK 
DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 

1918 


Copyright,  1918, 
By  DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY,  INC. 


College 
Ubrarj 

570 


THE  MEMORY  OF  OUR  SOLDIERS  WHO 
HAVE  FALLEN  IN  FRANCE  IN  ORDER 
THAT  THEIR  COMRADES  WHO  SUR- 
VIVE  MAY  MAKE   A   BETTER  WORLD 


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in  2007  witii  funding  from 

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littp://www.arcli  ive.org/details/americainfranceOOpalmiala 


TO  THE  READER 

Upon  our  entry  Into  the  war,  I  became  one  of  the 
band  of  reserve  officers  who  might  do  special  service 
while  they  envied  the  men  of  the  training  camps 
their  youth.  My  duties  allowed  me  a  wide  range 
of  information  and  observation  with  our  expedition- 
ary force  in  France  from  its  inception.  Under  the 
spell  of  our  marvelous  achievement,  which  is  the 
greatest  story  any  American  has  ever  had  to  tell,  I 
have  written  about  it  as  I  knew  it  through  its  phases 
of  building,  training,  fighting  and  of  unremitting 
effort  until  we  had  won  the  Saint  Mihiel  salient  and 
broken  the  old  German  line  in  the  Argonne  battle. 
Readers  of  My  Year  of  the  Great  War  and  My 
Second  Year  of  the  War  will  have  between  two 
covers,  if  they  choose,  my  third  and  fourth  years. 

Frederick  Palmer, 
Ma]or,  S.C,  U.S.A. 


CONTENTS 

CBAFTEa 

PAGE 

I 

Pershing  Goes  to  France  . 

I 

II 

Our  Great  Project 

II 

III 

The  First  Troops  Arrive  . 

22 

IV 

They  Go  to  Lorraine  . 

.             31 

V 

Hard  Training     .       .,      > 

43 

VI 

A  Blue  Print  Era 

56 

VII 

Many  Problems 

66 

VIII 

Building  an  Organization  . 

77 

IX 

Faith  in  the  Rifle 

94 

X 

Some  Firsts  for  the  First  . 

106 

XI 

Three  More  Divisions 

121 

XII 

Pulling  Upstream 

138 

XIII 

The  Other  "  Over  There  "  . 

155 

XIV 

The  Secretary  Comes  . 

166 

XV 

Everyday  Fighting 

182 

XVI 

All  We  Have  .... 

199 

XVII 

Our  First  Offensive     . 

211 

XVIII 

A  Call  from  the  Marne     . 

229 

XIX 

Holding  the  Paris  Road     . 

242 

XX 

Belleau  Wood  and  Vaux    . 

252 

X 

CONTENTS 

CHAPTER 

PAGE 

XXI 

Wounded  and  Prisoners    . 

272 

XXII 

Divisions  with  the  English 

280 

XXIII 

Our  Army  Travels     . 

293 

XXIV 

Busy  Days  for  the  C.-in-C. 

301 

XXV 

Resolute  Stonewalling    . 

310 

XXVI 

We  Strike  Back  . 

329 

XXVII 

Driving  Toward  Soissons  . 

340 

XXVIII 

ViERZY  AND   BeRZY-LE-SeC    . 

360 

XXIX 

Forward    from    Chateau-Thi 

- 

ERRY 

371 

XXX 

The  Heights  of  the  Ourcq 

385 

XXXI 

To  THE  Vesle 

.          400 

XXXII 

Saint  Mihiel 

.         414 

XXXIII 

We  Take  the  Salient 

428 

XXXIV 

Our  Argonne  Battle 

441 

XXXV 

Aviation       .... 

455 

XXXVI 

The  Great  Project  Realized 

467 

AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 


AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 


PERSHING  GOES   TO  FRANCE 

General  Pershing  at  the  War  Department — Commander  of  the 
American  Expeditionary  Forces — Modest  beginnings  of  our 
greatest  national  enterprise — Specialists  in  war  take  com- 
mand—The American  crusader — Difficult  even  for  the  French 
to  understand  our  distinterestedness — General  Pershing  and 
his  staflE  sail  from  New  York — Beginning  stafiF  work  on  ship- 
board— An  American  General  reviews  British  troops — Ova- 
tions in  Paris — The  real  General  Pershing. 

It  was  in  the  May  days  of  our  early  war  emotion 
and  war  effort,  after  public  imagination  had  re- 
sponded to  Marshal  Joffre's  call  for  American 
troops  to  fight  beside  his  veterans.  Long  lines  of 
private  cars  waited  on  the  sidings  of  the  Union  Sta- 
tion in  Washington  while  their  owners  were  seeking 
to  serve  the  government  for  a  dollar  a  year.  The 
word  coordination  had  not  yet  become  the  bandied 
symbol  of  the  thing  most  needed  and  most  desired 
in  harnessing  the  Niagara  of  our  national  energy 
into  voltage. 

Anyone  passing  along  the  corridors  of  the  War 
Department  who  looked  into  the  small  room  oppo- 
site the  Chief  of  Staff's  office  might  have  taken  the 
Major  General  and  other  officers  within  as  engaged 
in  some  routine  departmental  work  unless  he  had 


2  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

heard  someone  remark:  "  Pershing  is  in  there,  get- 
ting ready  to  go  to  France."  Such  was  the  begin- 
ning, in  a  quiet  office,  isolated  from  the  throbbing 
activity  of  Washington,  of  our  greatest  adventure 
in  arms  and  our  greatest  national  enterprise;  and 
the  modesty  of  it  was  in  keeping  with  the  lack  of  any 
large  body  of  troops  to  send  to  Europe  or  the  ships 
for  their  transport. 

Our  public  did  not  then  conceive  of  a  complete 
Russian  military  collapse,  let  alone  a  German  of- 
fensive sweeping  over  the  devastated  areas  of  the 
Somme  which  the  Allies  had  lately  won.  Joffre's 
candid  message  about  the  situation  had  not  dis- 
turbed the  serene  conviction  of  many  Americans  that 
our  weight  in  the  balance  would  drop  the  scales  of 
victory  for  the  Allies.  He  was  the  commander  of 
trained  armies  born  of  military  traditions  imbibed 
through  generations  in  face  of  the  enemy's  frontier. 
We  were  a  people  who  had  built  fortunes  and  vast 
enterprises,  homes,  schools  and  universities,  con- 
quered wildernesses,  taken  riches  out  of  the  earth 
and  set  deserts  abloom,  but  with  the  traditions  of 
eight  years  of  fighting  which  had  made  us  a  nation 
and  of  the  fratricidal  conflict  in  which  our  manhood 
had  proved  its  fortitude  and  courage  as  a  reminder 
to  later  generations,  emigrants  or  home  born,  of 
what  should  be  expected  of  them  if  they  were  to  be 
worthy  of  our  inheritance  in  some  future  trial.  In 
1 86 1,  few  men  foresaw  the  great  armies  which  we 
should  have  to  raise  before  a  decision  was  reached. 
In  May,  19 17,  no  one  thought  of  an  army  of  a 
million  men  in  France  except  in  the  imaginative 
flights  which  were  the  privilege  of  all  in  that  period. 


PERSHING  GOES  TO  FRANCE  3 

When  you  are  ill  you  turn  to  the  doctor.  When 
you  are  at  war  you  turn  to  the  trained  soldier.  It 
is  as  easy  to  forget  the  one  when  you  are  well  as 
to  forget  the  other  in  time  of  peace.  Although  we 
were  at  war  uniforms  were  rarely  seen  in  our  streets. 
In  the  training  camps  chosen  young  men  were  learn- 
ing the  rudiments  of  drill  in  order  to  become  officers 
who  should  train  troops  to  go  to  France  under 
Pershing. 

Our  regular  army  had  hardly  been  a  part  of  our 
national  life;  it  was  a  supplementary  official  neces- 
sity which  we  accepted  along  with  our  taxes.  Sud- 
denly, the  man  trained  in  war  had  become  the  man 
of  the  hour;  "  he  is  a  regular,"  the  tribute  to  a  type 
of  professional  specialism  which  made  the  owner  of 
a  private  car  envious.  Upon  the  way  that  our  little 
band  of  experts  molded  the  raw  material  of  our 
manhood  and  organized  our  resources  in  their  sup- 
port depended  the  result  of  our  effort,  a  thought  that 
will  be  running  through  all  these  pages,  which  deal 
with  the  triumph  of  men  as  men  and  how  they  were 
undismayed  when  they  lacked  resources  and  how 
they  utilized  the  resources  which  were  forthcoming. 

In  the  Washington  hotel  lobbies,  where  the  expert 
in  railroad  building  and  the  expert  in  steel-making 
each  respected  specialism,  it  was  only  incidental  to 
our  traditions  that  they  should  think  that  an  army 
was  a  force  of  armed  men  without  considering  how 
it  was  organized  and  directed.  They  lived  in  an- 
other world  from  that  of  the  officers  of  our  General 
Staff  in  the  rooms  along  the  corridors  from  where 
Pershing  had  begun  his  organization.  You  thought 
of  the  large,  technically  trained,  experienced  staffs 


4  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

of  our  large  corporations  in  comparison  with  the 
meager  personnel  which  was  to  organize  an  in- 
finitely larger  corporation,  whose  ledger  account  is 
reckoned  in  casualties  in  battle.  These  officers  had 
no  illusions;  they  understood  how,  in  cold  logic,  the 
German  Staff  had  reasoned  that  ruthless  submarine 
warfare  against  Britain  would  gain  results  more 
than  offsetting  any  force  which  we  might  bring 
against  Germany  before  she  planned  to  win  a  de- 
cision at  arms.  For  war  is  a  soldier's  business,  and 
our  soldiers  realized  the  immensity  and  the  com- 
plicated difficulties  of  Pershing's  task. 

Given  time  and  they  did  not  lack  faith  in  the  out- 
come. To  have  lacked  faith  would  have  been  un- 
American  and  shown  their  inappreciation  of  the 
forces  that  built  our  skyscrapers,  our  factories, 
our  colleges  and  the  spirit  of  our  democracy  and 
our  cause.  It  would  be  confessing  distrust  in 
American  manhood  drilling  at  the  training  camps, 
in  themselves  and  their  own  programme;  as,  hap- 
pily, in  this  war  we  had  taken  expert  advice.  We 
were  to  have  a  national  draft;  specialists  in  war 
were  to  be  given  the  authority  to  form  an  army 
along  sound  professional  lines.  The  architect's 
plans  for  the  structure  were  right;  the  thing  now 
was  the  building.  If  Joffre  were  a  marshal  of 
accomplishment,  Pershing  was  a  marshal  of  poten- 
tialities. 

The  instructions  which  the  General  received  be- 
fore he  left  the  little  room  to  sail  were  of  an  his- 
toric simplicity.  He  was  to  proceed  with  his  staff 
to  Europe,  there  "  to  command  all  the  land  forces 
of  the  United  States  operating  in  continental  Europe 


PERSHING  GOES  TO  FRANCE  5; 

and  in  the  United  Kingdom  of  Great  Britain  and 
Ireland,"  and  to  "  establish,  after  consultation  with 
the  French  War  Office,  all  necessary  bases,  lines  of 
communication,  etc.,  and  make  all  the  incidental 
arrangements  essential  to  active  participation  at  the 
front." 

Back  of  this  charter  of  authority  were  all  the 
principles  that  the  President  had  enunciated  in  his 
messages.  These  are  none  the  less  live  and  true  for 
iteration.  They  have  been  the  inspiration  of  all 
our  effort  in  France.  No  crusader  of  old  went  forth 
with  a  cause  freer  from  guile  than  the  American 
born  of  European  blood  returning  to  fight  in  Eu- 
rope a  battle  which  cemented  a  kinship  of  right  in 
the  world,  after  we  had  kept  faith  with  our  peaceful 
intentions  by  not  preparing  great  armaments. 

Often  the  French  villagers  asked  our  soldiers: 
"Why  are  you  here?  What  do  you  want?  Is  it 
colonies?  Is  it  power  in  the  affairs  of  Europe?" 
The  questions  were  natural  from  races  rooted  in 
their  soil,  with  its  defense  their  instinctive  self- 
interest  Through  all  the  months  of  labor  in  France 
the  wonder  of  our  being  in  France  never  ceased 
when  thoughts  took  a  certain  turn.  When  they  took 
another,  the  answer  was,  **  Where  else  should  we 
be?  "  Our  troops  would  return  with  no  tribute  from 
victory;  with  only  national  consciences  clear. 

When  and  on  what  ship  was  Pershing  going? 
Curiosity  pried  at  the  curtain  of  military  secrecy. 
Men  occupying  rooms  in  the  War  Department  ad- 
joining the  General's  did  not  know,  but  the  hotel 
lobbies  knew.  The  embarkation  was  matter-of-fact 
enough  from  a  government  tender  to  the  S.  S.  Baltic 


6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

in  a  May  rain  oflf  Staten  Island;  and  the  next  day 
the  staff  went  to  work — Commander,  Chief  of  Staff, 
and  other  staff  heads,  and  all  Colonels,  Majors, 
Captains,  Lieutenants,  interpreters  and  field  clerks, 
orderlies  and  messengers — one  hundred  and  fifty  in 
all.  A  few  were  reservists  who  had  jumped  into 
their  uniforms  before  sailing  and  were  uncertain 
whether  you  saluted  superiors  on  shipboard  or  not. 
Others  wore  the  colors  of  campaigns  in  Cuba,  the 
Philippines  and  China,  and  a  few  the  red  ribbon 
that  indicated  an  Indian  campaign,  which  were  to 
mingle  with  the  colors  of  South  Africa  and  India, 
of  Madagascar  and  Morocco,  and  those  of  the 
Military  Cross,  the  D.  S.  O.,  the  Croix  de  Guerre 
and  Medaille  Militaire.  We  were  proud  of  our 
one  handsome  gray-haired  officer  who  had  won  the 
Medal  of  Honor  from  Congress  and  ready  to  com- 
pare him  with  any  winner  of  the  Victoria  Cross. 

Many  of  the  officers  had  never  been  in  Europe. 
Their  knowledge  of  the  European  war  was  gained 
from  the  reports  of  our  military  observers  and 
general  reading.  Late  in  the  third  year  of  the  war 
they  were  going  abroad  as  leaders  who  were  to 
apply  the  experience  of  Europe's  masters  to  their 
own  army.  Anyone  who  expected  that  their  attitude, 
in  keeping  with  our  generally  accepted  characteristic 
of  self-assertion,  would  be  that  they  proposed  to 
"  show  Europe  how  "  reckoned  without  the  consid- 
eration that  their  professional  training  warned  them 
that  they  had  much  to  learn. 

Oh,  those  classes  in  French!  The  interpreters 
organized  the  officers  into  groups  of  different  grades, 
from    those    well-grounded    in    West    Point    book 


PERSHING  GOES  TO  FRANCE  7 

French  to  the  ones  who  did  not  know  how  to  ask 
the  way  or  for  something  to  eat,  while  arms  sore 
from  vaccination,  and  too  much  experience  with 
Spanish  on  the  border  were  offered  as  excuses  for 
not  immediately  acquiring  a  Parisian  accent.  Gen- 
eral Pershing  was  in  the  first  grade;  he  had  once 
studied  French  in  France.  Lectures  on  bombing  and 
sanitation  were  delivered  in  the  dining  saloon  to  fill 
in  any  spare  time  when  an  idler  might  have  been 
playing  shuffleboard. 

The  American  destroyers,  which  came  out  to  es- 
cort us  at  the  edge  of  the  submarine  zone,  were  a 
reminder  that  the  service  which  is  always  ready  for 
action  in  the  ships  which  it  has  and  the  crews  to 
man  them  was  striking  the  only  battle  blows  which 
we  had  yet  delivered  at  the  enemy.  Without  de- 
stroyer protection  there  would  be  no  American  army 
in  Europe.  Ever,  the  destroyer,  weaving  its  watch- 
ful course  of  guardianship  in  all  weathers,  will 
remain  the  symbol  of  a  devout  gratitude  to  all  men 
who  have  crossed  the  Atlantic  in  this  war.  Its  sight 
is  as  welcome  as  that  of  a  policeman  if  you  have 
a  burglar  in  the  house. 

When  the  General  reviewed  the  Guard  of  Honor 
on  the  pier  at  Liverpool,  of  course  someone  said, 
"  This  is  historic."  History  had  been  too  abun- 
dantly in  the  making  of  late  years  for  one  to  be 
certain  of  values;  yet  it  was  a  great  moment  when 
the  leader  of  an  American  army  come  to  fight  beside 
British  soldiers  stepped  ashore  on  English  soil.  It 
was  the  more  important  as  there  v/as  no  ceremony 
in  London  except  an  audience  by  the  King,  much 
to  the  relief  of  our  little  band  of  pioneers,  which 


S  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

was  off  to  the  War  OfHce  where  each  one  was  to 
meet  some  expert  in  his  own  line,  with  no  lessening 
of  his  conviction  of  what  a  lot  he  had  to  learn. 

In  France,  however,  there  must  be  ceremony. 
Why  had  Joffre  asked  for  the  prompt  dispatch  of 
troops?  For  the  immediate  effect  on  French  morale. 
Therefore,  France  refused  to  consider  the  modesty 
of  a  simple  American  soldier  who  wished  particu- 
larly to  avoid  martial  display  when  he  was  bringing 
only  a  staff  to  Europe.  She  needed  the  stimulus  of 
the  actuality  of  American  soldiers  on  her  soil,  which 
was  more  convincing  proof  that  we  were  in  this  war 
in  earnest  than  ten  thousand  columns  of  cablegrams 
about  our  preparations  at  home.  Ovations  were  the 
spontaneous  outcome  of  Parisian  feeling  which 
should  communicate  its  reassuring  thrill  to  every 
village  from  Brittany  to  the  Alps.  General  La- 
fayette's fame  resplendently  revived.  The  French 
schoolboy  was  learning  as  much  about  him  as  about 
the  American.  He  had  gone  to  America  to  help 
us;  Pershing  came  to  France  to  help  the  French. 

Not  since  the  war  had  begun  had  the  Parisian 
spirit,  stilled  to  breathless  silence  in  the  days  of  the 
Marne,  breathing  free  again  in  relief  after  the 
victory,  and  restrained  ever  since  by  the  drain  of 
life  and  the  pressure  of  the  grim  monotonous  proc- 
esses of  sacrifice,  broken  forth  in  a  manner  worthy 
of  welcoming  a  marshal  returning  from  decisive 
victory.  Our  officers  had  no  Idea  of  what  was  in 
store  for  them.  They  were  as  embarrassed  as  girl 
graduates  when,  on  the  way  from  the  station,  the 
crowds  surrounded  their  cars  and  threw  flowers  ^t 
them. 


PERSHING  GOES  TO  FRANCE  9 

"  Look  pleasant,  please !  "  called  an  American  to 
a  colonel, 

"  Only  then,"  said  the  colonel,  "  did  I  realize  that 
I  was  sitting  as  stiff  as  a  wooden  Indian  and  looking 
as  serious  as  a  Puritan  at  the  benediction — it  was  so 
staggering  to  be  a  hero  of  Paris." 

Our  General  found  himself  bowing  from  balconies 
to  cheering  multitudes  and  the  recipient  of  atten- 
tions which  were  once  reserved  for  visiting  mon- 
archs.  Fortunately,  he  had  traveled  much  and 
studiously  and  met  all  manner  of  men.  Within  the 
army  the  distinction  among  his  fellows  which  he 
had  already  won  before  he  left  West  Point  gave 
him  the  opportunities  of  varied  service  which 
ranged  from  the  General  Staff  in  Washington  to 
building  roads  and  schools  in  the  jungle  and  ruling 
the  Moros,  who  called  him  "  Datto,"  followed  by 
eleven  years  of  command  experience.  He  had  been 
of  the  group  of  attaches  with  Kuroki's  army  in 
Manchuria  who  were  the  eyes  of  the  armies  of  the 
world  in  observing  the  first  great  war  fought  with 
modern  arms.  There  I  first  knew  him  and  Captain 
Peyton  C.  March,  who  later  became  our  Chief  of 
Staff.  Colonel  Enoch  H.  Crowder,  who  was  our 
senior  attache,  was  to  be  responsible  for  our  Na- 
tional Draft,  as  Provost  Marshal  General.  The 
others  included  Sir  Ian  Hamilton,  who  led  the  Gal- 
lipoli  expedition;  Captain  von  Etzel,  who  was  to 
command  a  German  corps  at  Verdun;  Colonel 
Corvissart,  who  was  to  command  a  corps  opposite 
von  Etzel's;  Captain  Hoffman,  very  guttural  and 
very  Prussian,  who  became  the  representative  of 
the  German  Staff  at  the  Brest-Litovsk  Peace  Con- 


lo  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ference  and  engineered  the  collapse  of  Russia;  and 
Captain  Caviglia,  who  was  to  distinguish  himself  as 
an  army  commander  in  the  battle  of  the  Piave. 

We  were  to  have,  then,  as  our  leader  in  France 
a  man  thoroughly  trained  for  his  task  since  the  day 
he  left  Missouri  to  go  to  West  Point,  intrinsically 
American,  and  representative  of  our  institutions. 
No  soldier  could  have  criticized  his  speeches  for 
length  and  no  diplomat  for  lack  of  appreciation  of 
his  position  as  the  ambassador  of  the  hundred  mil- 
lions. France  looked  him  over,  and  liked  his  firm 
jaw,  his  smile,  his  straight  figure  and  his  straight 
way  of  looking  at  everyone  he  met.  He  brought 
cheer  and  promise  of  the  only  aid  which  France 
could  understand,  that  of  an  armed  force  which 
fights  on  land.  For  France  is  of  the  soil  and  vine- 
yards and  well-tilled  fields  and  thrifty  peasants,  and 
thinks  little  of  the  sea. 

Our  officers  remarked  with  dry  American  humor 
that  they  were  receiving  all  the  honors  due  Immortal 
heroism  before  they  had  done  any  fighting.  The 
realization  of  the  long  months  of  waiting  before  we 
should  have  troops  ready  to  go  into  the  line  put  the 
double  edge  to  their  appreciation  of  the  welcome  by 
thoughtful  Americans  in  the  midst  of  the  cheers. 


II 

OUR  GREAT   PROJECT 

First  American  uniforms  in  Paris — Modest  headquarters  on  the 
Rue  de  Constantine — Where  all  Americans  in  Paris  flocked — 
Crowded  quarters — Difficulties  of  making  a  start — Laying 
plans  for  a  great  army — Where  should  our  soldiers  fight, 
train,  disembark? — Our  national  characteristic  of  thinking 
"  big." 

Other  pioneers  had  been  in  France  in  behalf  of  the 
Allied  cause  before  our  staff.  We  had  given  freely 
of  our  money  and  effort.  Our  doctors  and  nurses 
manned  hospitals  that  we  had  equipped.  The  fliers 
of  the  Lafayette  Escadrille  were  a  little  legion  of 
American  chivalry  fighting  in  the  air;  and  hundreds 
of  drivers  of  the  two  American  ambulance  associa- 
tions coursed  the  roads  back  of  the  French  front. 

They  wore  uniforms  which  distinguished  them  as 
Americans  and  they  carried  our  flag  in  spirit  or  by 
courtesy,  but  their  uniforms  did  not  have  U.  S.  on 
the  collar  and  the  flag  was  not  official.  The  uni- 
forms now  seen  in  the  streets  were  official;  and  the 
authority  of  the  nation  raised  the  flag  at  the  new 
army  headquarters  in  Paris,  which,  in  its  magic  sym- 
bolism that  where  formerly  some  Americans  had 
been  striking  Germany,  now  all  were,  was  the 
harbinger  of  American  flags  appearing  In  the  re- 
motest corners  of  France;  of  busy  hours  for  needle- 
women who  were  sewing  the  stars  of  the  States, 


12  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

while  the  Red,  White  and  Blue  of  their  own  tri-color 
made  the  stripes  and  the  field  of  ours. 

The  modesty  of  the  premises  which  the  staff  occu- 
pied in  Paris  was  in  keeping  with  the  modesty  of  the 
beginnings  in  Washington.  Instead  of  taking  pal- 
aces or  hotels  on  the  Champs-Elysees,  the  officer 
who  had  the  arrangements  in  charge  sought  the 
other  side  of  the  Seine,  where  he  took  two  private 
houses  in  the  Rue  de  Constantine  overlooking  the 
Invalides,  as  if  the  one  thing  that  the  A.  E.  F. 
wished  to  do  after  the  furore  of  its  Parisian  recep- 
tion was  to  escape  further  publicity. 

In  the  corner  house.  No.  31,  General  Pershing 
settled  down  in  his  office,  which  was  the  corner  room 
upstairs,  and  began  his  service  in  France.  In  the 
adjoining  room  the  Chief  of  Staff  had  his  desk  and 
in  the  one  on  the  other  side  the  aides  had  theirs. 
The  atmosphere  of  the  aides'  room  was  more  like 
that  of  a  political  candidate's  anteroom  than  an  army 
headquarters.  Every  American  in  Paris  seemed  to 
have  some  reason  for  calling.  Why  not?  For  three 
years  he  had  longed  for  the  day  when  he  could  hold 
up  his  head  with  the  thought  that  his  country  was 
in  the  war.  Usually,  he  considered  it  necessary  to 
see  the  General  in  person. 

At  first,  an  orderly  tried  to  hold  the  wooden  gate 
which  was  put  up  as  a  check  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs, 
where,  in  other  days,  a  servant  had  opened  the  door 
for  callers  and  to  receive  cards.  The  orderly  had 
learned  some  fortitude  in  Mexico,  but  quailed  and 
yielded  before  this  onslaught.  An  officer,  a  gallant 
and  polite  gentleman  who  could  alternate  his  attitude 
between  that  of  a  diplomatic  usher  and  a  traffic 


OUR  GREAT  PROJECT  13 

policeman,  took  his  place.  While  he  was  consider- 
ing the  application  of  one  caller,  others  would  slip 
by  him  to  advance  on  the  General's  aides. 

It  was  amazing  the  number  of  people  the  General 
saw;  amazing  how  any  work  was  done  in  the  limited 
space  of  No,  31.  Young  America  in  France  wanted 
commissions  in  the  army;  old  America  in  France  had 
advice  to  offer;  the  pressure  on  the  War  Department 
was  repeated  in  Paris,  The  small  room  over  the 
stairs  held  a  group  of  French  officers  who  were  the 
intermediaries,  the  liaison,  in  all  the  relations  of  the 
pioneers  with  the  official  world  of  France,  arranging 
for  the  innumerable  conferences  required  for  co- 
operation with  the  French,  when  necessarily  all  our 
action  was  related  to  French  military  policy. 

In  other  parts  of  the  building  the  rest  of  the  staff 
overflowed  kitchens,  bedrooms  and  butler's  pantry. 
Two  or  three  officers  occupied  the  same  desk  at  the 
same  time.  A  captain  who  thought  that  he  had  a 
desk  of  his  own,  when  he  left  it  for  half  an  hour 
found  his  papers  pushed  to  one  side  and  a  major  in 
his  place  when  he  returned.  A  score  or  more  of 
newspaper  correspondents  called  every  day  in  answer 
to  the  eager  curiosity  of  the  people  at  home. 

There  was  relief  from  the  congestion  when  the 
Quartermaster's  Department  and  other  branches 
moved  into  the  Hotel  St.  Anne,  Rue  St,  Anne,  where 
desks  took  the  place  of  bedsteads,  while  everybody 
there  as  at  the  Rue  de  Constantine  was  on  the  jump 
with  a  French  interpreter  at  his  elbow.  Loss  of 
motion  for  the  want  of  supplies  because  of  the  limi- 
tations of  army  forms  and  of  lack  of  knowledge  of 
the  language,   was   an  inevitable  affliction  to  a  staff 


14  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

which  in  answer  to  a  hurry  call  had  rushed  across 
the  Atlantic.  Our  personnel,  which  might  have 
seemed  large  in  Washington,  became  ridiculously 
small  in  the  theater  of  the  European  war.  Hun- 
dreds of  problems  buffeted  and  laid  siege  to  the 
pioneers,  who  were  trying  to  familiarize  themselves 
with  conditions  at  the  same  time  that  they  organized 
for  immediate  future  requirements.  Each  branch 
must  lay  out  its  programme  and  these  programmes 
must  be  combined  into  a  whole. 

For  the  first  time  the  military  secrets  of  the  Allies 
were  open  to  us.  Officers  of  the  Operations  Section 
could  look  into  every  detail  of  the  operations  of  the 
French  and  British  armies,  familiarizing  themselves 
with  the  infernally  complicated  system  of  tactics  of 
trench  warfare.  They  could  sit  in  a  battalion  com- 
mander's post  of  commandment  or  at  corps  head- 
quarters and  watch  the  routine  of  command.  The 
Medical  Corps,  without  supplies,  could  observe  the 
care  of  the  wounded,  from  the  stretcher-bearers  to 
the  base  hospitals.  The  signal  corps,  without  sup- 
plies, might  ioWoY^  the  many  strands  of  wire  along 
the  walls  of  a  single  communication -trench  and  gain 
some  idea  of  the  material  for  communications  which 
our  army  would  require.  Officers  of  the  Intelligence 
Section  could  stretch  their  imagination  as  to  forces 
needed  by  meeting  the  company  of  experts  at  a 
Grand  Headquarters — experts  in  language,  in  ques- 
tioning prisoners,  in  censorship,  in  counter-espionage, 
in  all  the  business  of  keeping  information  from  the 
enemy  and  gaining  information  about  him.  As  for 
the  Quartermaster,  reserve  the  bulk  of  your  sym- 
pathy for  him.     Everybody  seemed  to  want  some- 


OUR  GREAT  PROJECT  15 

thing  from  him  which  he  could  not  supply,  when 
he  had  brought  no  more  baggage  to  Europe  than 
any  other  staff  officer.  He  might  buy  what  he 
could  in  the  open  market,  and  bid  those  who 
wrote  "  It  is  requested  "  to  wait  until  our  trans- 
ports arrived. 

In  any  army  the  inspiration  of  action  comes  from 
its  leader.  His  decision  is  final,  upon  the  advice 
of  his  generals  and  his  staff.  He  links  all  the  strands 
together  under  his  driving  hand;  he  is  the  ultimate 
authority  in  the  provision  of  any  programme  next 
to  that  of  the  Secretary  of  War  and  the  President. 
In  the  days  when  submarine  ravages  were  heavy, 
when  our  armies  were  in  the  making,  when  Russia 
was  still  in  the  war  and  British  confidence  high  after 
the  perfect  "  limited-objective  "  battle  of  Messines, 
when  many  people  thought  that  peace  would  arrive 
in  another  six  months,  and  when  our  camps  at  home 
were  still  busy  with  the  primer  lessons  of  soldiering, 
General  Pershing  laid  his  plans  for  the  patient  build- 
ing of  a  great,  thorough  army  organization  in  France 
and  an  adequate  plant  to  maintain  it.  Time  was  to 
justify  his  vision,  as  time  more  than  justified 
Kitchener's  vision  of  a  three  years'  war. 

Where  should  an  American  force  go  into  the 
line?  Where  should  it  be  trained  in  France?  The 
bases  established  for  its  maintenance  must  be  more 
or  less  permanent,  as  a  modern  army  is  tied  fast  to 
its  source  of  supply.  What  ports  were  we  to  use? 
Harbor  space  was  a  first  consideration,  for  we  must 
have  ample  gateways  for  an  ample  enterprise. 

The  question  of  training  brought  up  the  problems 
where    errors   may   be    most   glaringly   costly;    the 


i6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

preparation  of  soldiers  for  the  test  of  battle.  Dif- 
ference of  systems,  variation  of  ideas,  national 
psychology  and  changing  political  and  military  con- 
ditions all  played  a  part.  It  will  be  recollected  that 
the  French  Staff  had  strongly  advocated,  early  in  the 
war,  not  only  the  introduction  of  French  Staff  con- 
trol into  British  units,  but  even  the  introduction  of 
British  battalions  into  French  regiments,  for  the 
reason  that  the  French  Staff  was  experienced  in  the 
handling  of  large  bodies  of  troops  and  had  ample 
reserves  in  trained  officers,  owing  to  the  application 
of  military  training  to  all  classes  of  French  man- 
hood for  two  generations.  The  British  could  not 
accept  this  view,  even  if  the  mihtary  advantage  were 
granted,  owing  to  causes  inherent  in  pride  of  coun- 
try and  in  the  traditions  of  a  self-reliant  people. 

It  was  only  natural  that  the  French  should  want 
to  apply  the  same  system  to  us  and  that  the  British 
should  consider  that  the  bond  of  common  language 
alone  was  the  unanswerable  argument  that  we 
should  train  with  them.  Either  of  two  gallant  hosts 
begged  us  to  become  a  member  of  his  family.  It  was 
only  human  that  the  British  master  and  the  French 
master  should  want  the  American  as  his  disciple; 
a  proof  of  cither's  faith  in  himself  and  his  system. 
Each  one  wanted  the  privilege  of  instructing  the 
novice,  the  giant  beginner;  of  exerting  his  influence 
upon  the  young  nation  from  over  the  seas  which 
was  bringing  its  legions  to  bear  for  the  first  time 
in  an  European  war,  in  violation  of  Washington's 
policy  for  a  struggling  infant  now  become  of  ele- 
phantine strength. 

Full  compliance  with  the  request  of  either  side 


OUR  GREAT  PROJECT  17 

that  our  troops  should  be  introduced  into  its  army 
in  small  units  might  mean  that  we  should  have  no 
distinct  staff,  or  bases,  or  lines  of  communication, 
while  our  training  camps  at  home  became  recruiting 
depots  for  British  and  French  forces.  In  that  event, 
would  the  most  important  unit  of  war,  the  man  in 
the  ranks,  develop  the  maximum  of  power  against 
the  enemy  when  he  was  not  a  part  of  a  distinct 
jAmerican  army?  It  is  a  question  which  will  recur 
again;  a  question  which  sinks  the  plummet  deep 
in  human  psychology  and  in  our  part  in  the  war. 
Our  live  national  sympathy  for  France,  the  needs 
of  French  morale  and  many  other  considerations 
associated  us  with  the  French  army,  while  instruc- 
tions and  wisdom  kept  our  forces  integral  under 
the  tutelage  of  the  French,  who  generously  offered 
their  best  officers  and  troops  as  our  teachers. 

Nature  was  niggardly  in  supplying  western 
France  with  large  harbors;  and  her  harbor  masters 
never  contemplated  such  an  enterprise  as  ours  de- 
manding anchorage  and  wharf  space.  The  value  of 
New  York  Bay  and  the  piers  of  the  North  River 
transferred  to  a  point  between  Boulogne  and  Bor- 
deaux is  something  beyond  conjecture.  Already  the 
British  occupied  the  northern  ports  in  maintaining 
their  replacements,  in  feeding  their  immense  army, 
in  caring  for  their  wounded,  in  supplying  all  the 
material  for  the  offensive  which  they  were  con- 
ducting. 

We  must  turn  to  other  harbors  not  already  occu- 
pied. If  there  were  not  enough  piers  we  must 
build  them.  If  there  was  not  enough  anchorage 
space  we  must  dredge  it.      The  officers  who  were 


1 8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

dashing  about  France  in  the  company  of  French 
officers,  going  over  French  reports  and  suggestions, 
were  dreaming  great  dreams  as  the  pleasant  land- 
scape whisked  by — dreams  of  forming  the  plan 
which  was  to  be  the  basis  of  all  our  future  effort 
in  France  and  our  effort  at  home  in  preparing  for 
war  in  France. 

I  know  of  nothing  more  in  keeping  with  our  na- 
tional character  of  seeing  "  big "  and  thinking 
"  big "  than  the  visions  which  we  put  into  cold 
official  recommendations  when  the  submarine  rav- 
ages were  at  their  worst  and  we  had  no  illusions 
about  the  supply  of  American  shipping  for  transport. 
A  year  later,  with  a  deep  understanding  of  their 
foresight,  we  could  the  better  appreciate  how  of- 
ficers who  had  been  dealing  with  companies  of 
infantry  and  supplies  for  the  Mexican  border  ex- 
panded their  conception  to  our  needs  in  France.  It 
was  not  for  them  to  consider  that  the  sudden  end 
of  the  war  would  stop  their  building.  They  had 
seen  enough  to  know  that  Germany  was  far  from 
beaten,  and  they  proposed  to  prepare  a  force  which 
should  be  equal  to  our  part  in  assisting  the  Allies 
to  compass  her  defeat. 

"  Any  consideration  of  operations,"  said  the 
recommendations  to  Washington,  "  must  include  of- 
fensive operations  on  a  large  scale,  which  would 
require  twenty  combat  divisions  for  action."  These 
and  all  the  personnel  of  supply  necessary  to  support 
them,  after  studying  the  French  and  the  British 
systems,  "  must  look  toward  a  million  men,  the 
smallest  unit  which,  in  modern  war,  will  be  a  com- 
plete fighting  organization."      At  home,  the  plan 


OUR  GREAT  PROJECT  19 

should  contemplate  the  completion  in  two  years  of 
a  programme  for  three  million  men. 

The  officers  in  the  crowded  rooms  in  the  Rue  de 
Constantine,  when  we  had  not  two  platoons  of  in- 
fantry or  a  single  gun  in  France,  having  outlined 
their  project  for  the  millions  as  an  indication  of 
what  was  expected  of  Washington,  then  worked  out 
their  tables  of  organization  and  their  system  for  re- 
placement, and  the  different  types  of  schools  required 
in  France  and  in  the  States  to  teach  officers  of  our 
new  army  not  yet  commissioned  and  soldiers  not  yet 
in  uniform  the  latest  technique  in  every  branch. 

There,  within  a  stone's  throw  of  the  Invalides 
and  in  sight  of  Napoleon's  tomb,  these  men  of  from 
thirty-five  to  forty-five  years  of  age  of  our  little 
General  Staff,  with  the  help  of  sober  field  clerks 
who  ran  the  typewriters,  created  armies  out  of  the 
youths  still  walking  our  streets,  transferred  them 
across  the  Atlantic,  marched  them  and  fought  them 
against  the  Kaiser's  armies,  not  in  War  College 
theory,  but  in  abundant  conviction  that  their  proj- 
ects could  be  realized.  A  von  Tirpitz  or  a  Luden- 
dorff,  looking  over  their  shoulders,  might  have  said, 
"  You  may  as  well  imagine  you  are  playing  ball 
with  the  stars."  But  Napoleon,  who  had  created 
armies  out  of  republican  crowds,  could  have  said, 
*'  I,  too,  dreamed."  Whatever  Napoleon  come  to 
life  might  think,  aren't  we  the  people  who  lay  out 
the  streets  of  a  town  across  the  fields  and  name 
them  all  before  a  house  is  built?  How  old  is 
Chicago?  How  long  since  Kansas  City  was  a  trad- 
ing post? 

We  must  not  only  have  ports,  but  great  ware- 


20  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

houses,  depots  and  regulating  stations — everything- 
across  the  Atlantic  that  the  British  had  across  the 
Channel.  In  conference  with  the  French,  we  studied 
the  map  of  France  as  railroad  builders  and  town 
builders  had  studied  the  geography  and  the  resources 
of  the  West.  Instead  of  pioneering  in  a  new  coun- 
try with  everything  at  hand  for  building,  we  were  to 
pioneer  in  an  old  land,  whose  resources  were  under 
the  strain  of  war.  Were  we  to  fight  in  France,  we 
must  bring  our  own  supplies  with  us  and  in  our  own 
transport  as  surely  as  the  Forty-Niners  had  to  bring 
theirs. 

With  the  size  of  the  army  contemplated  in  a  given 
time  known,  we  could  prepare  for  its  requirements 
in  a  given  time.  With  the  sector  of  the  front  we 
were  to  occupy  known,  officers  could  go  about  say- 
ing with  an  Aladdin  confidence,  "  Here  is  where 
we  shall  build  a  twenty-thousand-ton  cold  storage 
plant "  and  "  there  we  must  have  warehouses  to 
accommodate  a  million  tons."  The  southern  At- 
lantic ports  of  France  and  the  railways  of  Central 
France  and  the  free  swing  with  plenty  of  room 
which  we  should  require  for  our  national  effort, 
combined  to  locate  our  future  theater  of  action  be- 
tween Verdun  and  the  Swiss  border,  with  the  possi- 
bility of  turning  further  northward  from  Central 
France  as  an  axis  in  case  of  emergency.  A  people 
used  to  distances,  we  were  set  a  problem  in  dis- 
tances, after  our  troops  and  supplies  were  landed, 
farther  than  from  London  to  the  Somme  battle 
front.  Our  lines  of  communication  were  to  stretch 
clear  across  France  to  the  hills  and  valleys  of  Lor- 
raine, facing  the  Alsace-Lorraine  of  French  desire. 


OUR  GREAT  PROJECT  21 

Of  all  the  cablegrams,  ever  increasing  in  volume 
from  the  days  of  meagerness  in  June,  19 17,  which 
have  passed  between  "  Agwar  "  and  "  Pershing, 
Amexforce,"  none  of  these  better  expressed  the 
"  make-it-brief  "  spirit  than  that  of  July  ist,  in  which 
the  whole  plan  for  our  operations  was  outlined  to 
the  War  Department,  which  might  well  have  been 
stunned  when  it  thought  of  all  that  had  to  be  done 
to  carry  out  the  gigantic  conception.  These  thou- 
sands of  pages  of  cablegrams  are  a  skeleton  history 
of  the  expedition  which  recollection  makes  live  with 
the  tired  muscles  of  soldiers  in  training,  the  heart 
of  determination  and  the  nerves  quivering  under 
strain  held  in  leash  by  will  and  the  spirit  that  con- 
quers obstacles. 


Ill 


THE   FIRST  TROOPS  ARRIVE 

Building  for  an  army  of  millions — The  first  convoy — The  first 
American  troops  unlike  any  soldiers  France  had  ever  seen — 
Emotions  of  an  American  watching  his  own  troops  arriving 
in  France — Surprising  variety  of  Americans  in  the  first  con- 
tingent— General  Pershing  pays  a  visit  to  see  his  boys  dis- 
embark— The  First  Division — Everything  to  do  to  transform 
green  recruits  into  trained  soldiers. 

Until  troops  arrived,  the  Staif  would  have  the  feel- 
ing of  a  head  without  a  body;  of  a  delegation  rather 
than  of  an  army.  It  awaited  impatiently  the  coming 
of  the  division  of  regulars  which  was  to  follow  Gen- 
eral Pershing  to  France  and  with  some  curiosity  as 
to  its  character. 

Already  the  expansion  of  our  regular  regiments 
had  left  one  trained  man  to  stiffen  and  educate  three 
recruits.  Pride  would  have  skimmed  the  best  of- 
ficers and  men  from  several  divisions  in  order  to 
make  a  good  showing  abroad;  and  effect  would  have 
demanded  that  the  large  cities  of  France  should  have 
a  glimpse  of  their  veteran  precision.  We  might 
have  even  rushed  over  two  such  divisions. 

A  different  view,  which  prevailed  in  profit  of 
British  experience,  had  in  mind  how  the  flower  of 
the  British  army  went  to  the  sacrifice  at  Mons  at 
the  expense  of  instructors  for  the  future  new  British 
army.    Our  regular  army,  at  the  beginning  of  19 17, 


THE  FIRST  TROOPS  ARRIVE         23 

was  even  smaller  than  the  British  in  19 14,  while 
our  man-power  was  more  than  double  that  of  the 
British  Isles.  As  the  Germans  were  then  held  on 
all  fronts,  no  emergency,  then  in  sight,  required  any 
such  concentration  of  our  best  available  troops  of 
the  kind  which  hurried  Sir  John  French's  army 
against  the  German  advance  through  Belgium. 

Thus,  we  could  safeguard  our  own  experts  for 
school-mastering.  Although  they  might  long  to  be 
among  the  "  first  in  France,"  we  distributed  them 
among  the  new  divisions  which  were  forming  at 
home,  in  order  to  develop  an  army  of  that  uniform 
quality  necessary  to  a  commander's  confident  han- 
dling in  action.  One  or  two  or  three  crack,  divisions, 
selected  at  the  expense  of  the  others,  would  have 
been  earlier  in  the  trenches  than  a  recruit  division, 
but  they  would  have  a  long  wait  before  they  were 
reinforced  by  other  trained  divisions.  Indeed,  we 
should  have  had  a  small  corps  d'elite  in  France  and 
a  large  military  mob  at  home. 

Those  bold  young  staff  officers,  working  out  their 
ambitious  projects  on  paper  in  the  Rue  de  Con- 
stantine,  approved  this  decision.  It  fitted  in  with 
the  splendid  theory  of  building  according  to  their 
professional  ideals.  They  kept  right  on  thinking  in 
terms  of  millions  as  if  from  the  force  of  habit. 
When  they  thought  of  effect  it  was  military  effect. 
The  display  of  a  crack  division  might  thrill  the  Al- 
lies with  the  idea  that  we  were  impressing  Germany, 
when  the  one  authority  to  be  impressed  was  the 
German  Staff,  which  was  watching  to  see  whether 
or  not  America  meant  to  make  a  real  army  of  a  size 
commensurate  with  her  population  and  resources. 


24  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

If  anything  ought  to  be  kept  a  secret  it  should  be 
the  port  of  debarkation  of  the  first  American  force 
to  pass  through  the  submarine  zone,  and  the  time  of 
its  arrival.  The  navy,  which  had  the  responsibility 
of  safe  conduct,  was  not  lacking  in  self-consciousness 
in  this  respect. 

Meanwhile,  we  had  to  make  preparations  for  re- 
ceiving the  troops  at  some  particular  port.  The 
more  mysterious  the  French  and  the  American  of- 
ficers delegated  to  the  task  appeared  the  more  they 
confirmed  the  purpose  of  their  presence.  Everybody 
in  that  port  knew  that  it  was  to  have  the  honor  of 
being  host  to  the  Americans;  and  people  traveling 
up  to  Paris  carried  the  news.  I  heard  the  port 
identified  as  a  matter  of  gossip  before  I  heard  its 
identification  in  the  Staff  as  a  matter  of  strict  con- 
fidence. The  mayor  of  the  port  issued  a  proclama- 
tion of  welcome.  He  wanted  a  public  ceremony  and 
speech  making,  French  journalists  and  photog- 
raphers went  out  on  a  dispatch  boat  to  meet  the 
first  incoming  transport.  While  we  still  had  seven 
thousand  men  at  sea,  the  bonds  of  censorship  were 
broken  and  the  initial  landing  of  troops  announced. 

That  port  was  far  from  the  French  front.  Ma- 
terial of  war  came  to  its  piers,  but  no  soldiers.  Pros- 
perity and  distinction  beckoned  to  it  from  the  first 
American  transport  that  arrived,  while  our  Admiral 
of  the  escort  decided  that  he  had  a  right  to  some 
relaxation  and  dinner  on  shore  when  the  last  was  in. 
He  had  received  a  consignment  of  soldiers  with 
orders  to  deliver  them  to  France,  and  they  were 
safely  delivered.  He  had  not  thought  that  any  acci- 
dent might  happen.    But  suppose  there  had  I 


THE  FIRST  TROOPS  ARRIVE         25 

The  character  of  the  ships  which  we  had  gath- 
ered as  transports  was  significant  enough  of  our  lack 
of  a  merchant  marine;  a  former  German  auxiliary 
cruiser  and  sea-going  and  coast-going  vessels  of  a 
plodding  speed.  Above  the  gunwales  of  their  gray 
sides  was  a  crowded  mass  of  khaki  spotted  with 
white  faces,  and  all  the  parts  of  the  superstructure 
were  blotted  and  festooned  by  khaki,  freed  of  the 
long  nights  in  the  close  quarters  of  the  hold  when 
no  lights  might  be  shown  on  deck,  now  out  in  the 
sunlight  of  a  June  day  having  their  first  glimpse  of 
France,  which  was  having  its  first  glimpse  of  an 
American  army.  Nothing  that  these  soldiers  saw 
was  like  what  they  had  left — boats,  piers,  houses, 
streets,  people — and  they  were  like  no  soldiers  who 
had  ever  come  to  France  before.  Their  talk  had 
the  rattling  twang  of  the  bleachers  before  the  ball 
game  begins,  unmistakable  wherever  you  hear  it. 
Well,  here  they  were.  The  "  subs  "  had  not  got 
them.  They  wouldn't  have  to  knock  about  deck  in 
the  dark  or  be  packed  in  the  hold  any  longer.  The 
sea  was  all  right;  let  the  navy  have  it!  But  give 
them  the  land;  they  were  soldiers!  When  did  they 
get  ashore?  And  what  next?  A  different  set  of 
questions  rose  in  the  observer's  mind.  How  many 
more  thousands  and  hundreds  of  thousands  would 
come?    When  and  where  would  their  services  end? 

Their  landing  resolved  the  landing  of  the  Staff 
at  Boulogne  into  a  prologue  in  front  of  the  curtain 
which  now  rose  on  the  play.  Town  and  quay  fell 
into  insignificance;  the  ships  dissolved  into  the  sky, 
leaving  only  the  troops  visible,  supreme — the  first  of 
our  fighting  men  in  France.     The  wonder  of  Amer- 


26  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ica  in  France  never  exerted  Its  spell  more  com- 
pletely. To  one  whose  emotions  had  lost  their 
resiliency  after  watching  the  war  for  three  years, 
here  was  something  new.  As  he  thought  of  all  that 
the  picture  stood  for  to  him,  an  American,  the  war 
was  beginning  afresh  for  him  even  as  it  was  begin- 
ning in  the  minds  of  these  men.  As  he  tried  to 
articulate  the  thrill  of  his  emotions,  something 
tightened  his  throat  and  left  him  silent  with  a  mil- 
lion little  needles  running  a  riot  of  prickles  through 
his  veins.  For  these  were  his  own  soldiers,  the 
soldiers  of  his  own  people,  come  from  his  land  to 
hazard  their  courage  in  the  greatest  of  wars. 

When  I  saw  an  American  battalion  marching 
through  the  streets  and  discrimination  laid  its  re- 
straint on  sentimental  exhilaration  in  the  recollec- 
tion of  the  columns  of  British  regulars,  every  man 
molded  by  long  training,  which  had  marched  out  of 
Boulogne  in  August,  19 14,  I  almost  wished  that 
Staffs  were  less  particular  about  all-round  pro- 
grammes and  that  we  had  sent  over  a  crack  division 
of  regulars  as  an  example  of  the  kind  of  trained 
soldiers  that  we  could  produce. 

"  The  babies !  "  said  an  old  regular  sergeant. 
"  You  can't  blame  them  for  their  ignorance,  and 
you  can't  tell  them  all  they've  got  to  learn  without 
taking  the  heart  out  of  them.  You've  got  to  nurse 
them  along  by  degrees,  animadverting  righteously 
to  those  who  take  their  education  best  that  way  at 
intervals." 

They  did  know  how  to  keep  step  and  which  is 
the  business  end  of  a  rifle  and  that  when  you  march 
in  a  column  of  fours  this  does  not  mean  threes  and 


THE  FIRST  TROOPS  ARRIVE         27 

twos.  Many  were  as  they  had  come  to  the  recruiting 
station  plus  a  certain  amount  of  drill  at  home,  and 
all  stiff-legged,  pasty  and  somewhat  unkempt.  If 
the  sardines  in  the  can  were  alive  and  flopped  about 
they  would  not  look  neat  when  the  can  was  opened. 
You  noticed  all  kinds  of  Americans  in  the  ranks  as 
they  went  by — Americans  who  hardly  spoke  English 
as  well  as  college  graduates,  including  the  veteran 
regulars  whose  straight  backs  and  square  shoulders 
stood  out  in  admonitory  superiority  to  youths  who 
had  yet  to  develop  a  soldier's  physique  before  they 
went  into  battle. 

But  they  were  troops,  American  troops,  and  in 
France !  To  no  one  had  this  fact  a  greater  appeal 
than  to  General  Pershing,  who  had  come  down  from 
Paris  as  eager  as  a  schoolboy  to  see  them.  Furthest 
removed  of  all  officers  from  his  men  by  the  grada- 
tions of  rank,  the  Commander-in-Chief,  if  he  is  a 
human  leader  and  not  a  bureaucrat,  is  nearest  them 
in  thought.  It  is  they  who  count.  All  organization 
exists  to  supply,  equip,  train  and  inspirit  them. 

A  walk  through  the  streets  of  a  depot  of  great 
warehouses  leaves  emotion  dead  where  it  thrills  at 
sight  of  a  platoon  moving  up  to  the  trenches,  or  the 
gunners  of  a  battery  at  work.  Who,  if  not  their 
leader,  his  firm  features  and  erect  carriage  as  an 
example  of  the  iron  will  and  bearing  he  would  have 
them  achieve,  could  realize  the  training  these  men 
needed?  But  they  were  troops — troops — troops; 
their  presence  in  France  meant  that  he  had  the 
nucleus  of  an  army.  There  was  a  glad  light  in  his 
eyes  and  also  a  light  which  was  a  promise  of  the 
course  he  was  to  put  them  through  before  they  were 


28  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

to  go  Into  the  trenches,  which  was  for  the  sake  of 
the  United  States  and  of  their  own  mothers  who 
would  not  want  them  heedlessly  sacrificed  in  their 
callow  unpreparedness.  In  numbers  they  were  only 
half  a  full  division,  with  their  total  of  about  thirteen 
thousand  men,  including  a  regiment  of  Marines,  who, 
being  used  to  ship  life  and  having  a  larger  percen- 
tage of  veterans,  showed  the  results  in  their  appear- 
ance. 

This  First  Division  was  to  have  the  handicap  as 
well  as  the  honor  of  being  first.  It  was  to  be  the 
object  of  the  most  experiments  in  training.  From 
its  experience  were  learned  the  lessons  by  which 
later  arrivals  profited.  It  came  first  out  of  democ- 
racy's individualism  to  the  untried  business  of  ship's 
discipline  through  the  submarine  zone;  to  the  first 
censorship  and  all  other  kinds  of  regulations  and 
to  the  first  arrangements  for  landing  and  camping. 
Three-fourths  of  the  officers  were  reserve,  set  over 
recruits  sent  to  the  scene  of  expert  warfare.  All 
this  is  not  in  criticism;  only  to  indicate  the  nature 
of  the  travail  which  was  to  be  theirs — the  travail 
which  wrought  the  First  Division  into  finished  sol- 
diers, as  we  shall  see. 

At  the  camp  outside  the  town  where  the  men 
were  to  stretch  their  sea  legs  and  brush  up  and 
acclimate  themselves  before  moving  to  Lorraine, 
we  had  the  first  glimpse  of  that  American  soldier 
world  which  was  to  expand  in  France.  There  was 
an  atmosphere  of  the  border,  no  less  than  of  home, 
in  the  queues  of  soldiers  receiving  their  American 
rations,  in  the  officers  sitting  down  at  their  messes 
with  the  same  food  as  the  men;  an  expeditionary 


THE  FIRST  TROOPS  ARRIVE         29 

effect  which  suggested  that  a  landing  in  France  of 
a  force  bringing  the  regulation  army  supplies  was 
much  the  same  as  a  landing  at  Vera  Cruz,  where 
three  years  previously  I  had  seen  our  transports 
disembark  troops  and  cargo — only  the  troops  at 
Vera  Cruz  were  all  regulars,  as  you  knew  by  the 
sight  of  them  when  they  marched  off  the  piers. 

It  is  only  fair  to  say,  too,  that  the  details  for 
the  dispatch  of  this  expedition  from  home  had  not 
been  rehearsed  according  to  accepted  Prussian  Staff 
thoroughness.  The  Quartermaster's  Department, 
under  the  strain  of  providing  for  the  training  camps 
and  the  influx  of  recruits,  must  have  given  that  ex- 
pedition such  a  blessing  as  this :  "  Joffre  wanted 
troops  in  a  hurry.  Here  they  are.  We've  got  them 
started,  anyhow."  Yes,  we  were  to  learn  much  about 
war  organization  in  the  next  six  months.  The  quar- 
termaster who  had  to  receive  the  expedition  may 
have  cursed  the  home  quartermaster  in  his  heart; 
I  never  heard  him  curse  aloud.  He  had  to  do  the 
best  he  could  in  everything,  from  organizing  mili- 
tary police  to  unloading  cargo. 

The  pioneers  who  had  only  to  build  themselves  a 
house  of  hewn  logs  in  the  wilderness  and  bring  in 
fresh  meat  with  their  rifles  had  a  relatively  simple 
task  compared  to  his.  He  needed  automobiles;  he 
needed  motor-trucks;  he  needed  everything.  Some 
of  these  were  in  the  hold  once  they  could  be  sorted 
out,  for  the  different  parts  of  a  motor-truck  might 
not  be  on  one  ship  or  two  ships  or  three,  and  one 
essential  part  for  the  assembling  might  be  altogether 
missing.  Thus,  there  were  other  items  than  troops 
for  General   Pershing  to  consider   in   realizing  his 


30  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

problem — which  did  not  interfere  with  the  im- 
pressiveness  of  his  meeting  with  Admiral  Cleaves, 
as  the  army  shook  the  navy's  hand,  in  congratula- 
tions over  the  fact  that,  regardless  of  the  troubles 
of  the  quartermaster,  the  first  contingent  was  safe 
in  France. 

American  mules  went  through  the  streets  of  that 
little  port  town,  drawing  army  wagons  piled  high 
with  officers'  bedding  rolls  or  sides  of  beef;  motor- 
trucks that  had  been  on  the  Mexican  border  ran  past 
them  on  the  way  out  to  the  camp;  military  police 
began  keeping  the  crowds  off  the  piers;  the  navy  blue 
of  sailors  on  shore  mingled  with  khaki  on  the  curbs 
or  sat  in  front  of  the  cafes;  and  under  the  covering 
barrages  of  gestures  the  vanguard  of  the  expedition 
was  making  its  first  frontal  attack  on  the  French 
language. 


IV 

THEY  GO  TO  LORRAINE 


Touring  versus  fighting  in  France — ^Wonderful  roads  of  France — 
Billets — Introducing  soldiers  into  the  family  life  of  the 
French — Lorraine  and  the  Lorrainers — Actions  and  reactions 
between  French  as  hosts  and  Americans  as  guests — Those  do- 
mestic manure  heaps — Why  our  boys  respect  the  French — 
French  "  kiddies." 


In  years  to  come  the  remark  of  the  summer  tourist, 
"  I  have  been  to  France,"  will  be  an  idle  super- 
ficiality to  the  veterans  of  the  A.  E.  F.,  who  can  say, 
"  I  have  fought  in  France.  I  have  marched  the 
roads  of  France.  I  have  ridden  in  box  cars  and 
slept  in  barns  and  dugouts  and  shell  craters  in  France 
and  lived  in  the  homes  of  the  people." 

As  an  educational  institution  the  A.  E.  F.  had  the 
advantage  of  disciplinary  application  over  Chau- 
tauquas  and  university  settlements.  Nineteen  out  of 
twenty  of  our  men  would  never  have  gone  to  France 
if  tlie  nation  had  not  put  them  in  uniforms  and  given 
them  a  free  passage.  When  they  left  America  they 
were  thinking  only  of  a  great  adventure  overseas. 
Their  ideas  about  France  were  generically  concrete, 
perhaps,  though  utterly  vague  in  detail.  Before  the 
war  they  thought  of  the  French  as  a  polite,  effemi- 
nate people ;  since  the  war  France  had  come  to  stand 
for  courage  and  gameness. 

31 


32  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

An  old  traveler,  who  knew  France  well,  might 
renew  his  youth  by  seeing  France  through  the  eyes 
of  youth  fresh  from  a  new  land.  To  our  soldiers, 
I  may  repeat,  there  had  been  only  one  kind  of  rail- 
road cars,  only  one  kind  of  surface  cars,  only  one 
kind  of  towns,  villages  and  farms — the  kind  they 
knew  at  home.  As  the  French  landscape  unrolled 
before  their  eyes  they  saw  the  well-tilled  fields 
stretching  between  the  villages,  where  the  farmers 
lived,  as  if  forming  a  national  garden.  Everything 
in  France  seemed  to  have  been  built  to  last  for  a 
long  time.  There  were  rarely  any  yards  in  front 
of  the  houses  which  were  flush  with  the  sidewalk; 
and  then,  to  your  surprise,  you  found  cloistered  gar- 
dens and  lawns  in  the  rear,  hidden  from  the  street. 
The  people  were  polite  and  they  smiled  like  the 
landscape. 

It  was  the  roads,  the  great  main  roads,  which 
won  our  chief  admiration.  They  bound  the  farms 
and  the  provinces  together  in  still  closer  unity  and 
they  had  a  practical  appeal  which  is  so  vital  to  armies 
moving  on  foot,  on  horseback  or  on  wheels. 

Our  first  motor-truck  company  to  arrive  in  France 
had  come  straight  from  Mexico,  where  it  had  been  in 
pursuit  of  Villa.  After  the  trucks  were  assembled 
and  the  captain,  a  reserve  officer,  announced  that 
they  were  ready  to  start  the  next  morning,  the  ser- 
geant^ an  old  regular  with  a  sandstone  face,  desert- 
wrinkled,  who  treated  the  new  captain  with  a  kindly 
patronage,  felt  it  his  duty  to  remonstrate. 

"  We've  no  frogs  and  chains,"  he  said.  These 
had  been  most  essential  in  getting  out  of  desert 
sloughs. 


THEY  GO  TO  LORRAINE  33 

"  Never  mind.  That  will  be  all  right!  "  the  cap- 
tain said. 

*'  Yes,  sir,  but  I  warn  you  we've  got  no  frogs  and 
chains,"  the  sergeant  concluded. 

He  had  given  fair  notice.  Now  let  the  captain 
find  out  for  himself  that  handling  army  motor  trans- 
port was  a  different  business  than  running  out  from 
his  office  to  the  golf-course  in  his  own  machine. 

Straight  and  smooth  a  Route  Nationale  beckoned 
the  sergeant  the  next  morning  when  he  left  the  port. 
The  veteran  trucks  sped  on  for  half  an  hour  with 
that  road  seeming  to  have  no  end.  But  the  ser- 
geant was  still  unconvinced.  That  Harvard  college 
captain  would  yet  see  that  frogs  and  chains  were 
necessary.  Two  hours  later,  when  the  road  was  still 
the  same  taut  ribbon  stretching  away  into  the  dis- 
tance, he  capitulated  to  the  captain's  foresight  with 
a  few  dry  remarks. 

**  Well,  I  hand  it  to  these  people  in  the  matter  of 
roads.  They  sure  got  Mexico  beat  and  got  us  beat. 
Down  in  Mexico  I  thought  I  was  earning  about  five 
hundred  dollars  a  month.  I  guess  the  prospect  is 
now  I'll  be  owing  the  Government  something  for 
the  privilege  of  being  in  the  army.  In  Mexico  there 
don't  seem  nothing  to  do  but  make  war  and  cussed- 
ness;  but  why  should  anybody  want  to  go  to  war 
in  a  country  like  this?  I  guess  the  Kaiser  wants 
some  of  this — that's  what's  the  matter.  Don't  it 
kind  of  make  your  eyes  sing  after  Mexico? — Every- 
thing so  green  and  neat  and  all  the  little  groves  and 
trees  like  columns  of  soldiers  guarding  the  roads. 
You  can  see  that  the  people  have  been  planting  and 
reaping  and  sticking  on  the  job  generally  for  hun- 


34  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

dreds  of  years  and  they  have  certainly  got  a  big  bank 
account  laid  up  in  old  mother  earth." 

He  was  reminded  by  the  captain  how  Caesar  had 
built  roads  for  the  passage  of  his  legions  and  how 
Napoleon  had  built  more  roads  for  the  passage  of 
his,  all  of  which  became  a  legacy  to  future  genera- 
tions. Perhaps  the  necessity  of  the  war  which 
brought  us  to  France  may  set  our  national  thought 
to  flowing  on  the  straight  broad  way  as  the  legacy 
of  the  A.  E.  F.  to  our  future. 

Though  our  men  wanted  to  take  the  roads  of 
France  home  with  them,  none  wanted  to  take  his 
"  billets."  There  is  the  word  which  spells  the  most 
significant  feature  of  army  life  in  France  to  every 
officer  and  soldier.  "  Tenting  on  the  old  camp 
ground  to-night !  "  will  hardly  do  as  a  song  for 
future  veterans'  associations.  In  our  mind  army  life 
was  still  associated  with  tents  until  the  barracks  of 
our  training  camps  at  home  were  built  and  the  men 
began  writing  from  France  about  their  billets. 

The  French  were  our  hosts  in  more  than  a  formal 
sense.  We  entered  their  homes  as  officially  assigned 
guests.  Reverse  the  situation  and  suppose  that  an 
army  speaking  another  language  came  to  help  us 
against  an  invader,  and  when  a  company  marched 
into  a  village  every  house  became  a  hostelry  to  which 
a  certain  number  of  soldiers  were  assigned.  It 
would  create  a  flutter  in  our  domestic  circles,  to  say 
the  least.  In  Europe  to-day  no  man's  house  is  his 
castle  when  the  army  wants  it.  The  chateau  be- 
comes the  general's  headquarters  and  other  officers 
get  quarters  in  a  descending  scale  of  comfort  in 
keeping  with  their  rank.     It  is  the  thought  that  an 


THEY  GO  TO  LORRAINE  35 

invader  will  arbitrarily  exercise  the  same  authority, 
ever  present  in  the  French  mind,  which  reinforces 
patriotism  with  a  sovereign  self-interest  in  national 
defense. 

"If  you  want  a  job  that  will  tear  your  nerves  to 
tatters  be  a  billeting  officer,"  said  a  weary  colonel, 
after  the  First  Division  had  arrived  in  its  training 
area.  The  journey  across  France  hardly  recalled 
the  luxury  which  private  soldiers  had  enjoyed  at 
home  when  they  were  sent  to  the  Border  in  sleepers. 
Now  they  went  in  box  cars  marked  "  36  men  or  8 
horses  " — just  as  the  sons  of  the  best  families  in 
France  travel  on  their  troop  trains,  singing  the  songs 
of  France  and  exchanging  the  quips  of  trench  jargon 
— and  after  their  arrival  they  were  assigned  to  bil- 
lets in  the  village  houses  and  barns.  When  an 
officer  or  a  man  says  that  he  liked  his  billet  in  any 
particular  village  it  means  not  only  that  he  liked  his 
quarters,  but  also  his  hosts  and  his  neighbors. 

Our  First  Division  was  to  train  in  the  land  of 
Joan  of  Arc.  The  Lorrainers  are  a  stiff-necked 
people,  less  volatile  than  the  people  of  other  parts 
of  France,  but  polite  as  are  all  the  French.  While 
they  fought  stubbornly  in  this  war  and  in  others  to 
hold  their  frontier  they  were  standing  between  the 
Germans  and  the  sun-blessed  southern  France,  which 
profits  by  their  wall  of  heroism  as  England  profits  by 
her  Channel.  In  August,  19 14,  the  invaders  swept 
as  far  as  Charmes  as  the  Bavarians  aimed  for  the 
great  gap  of  Mirecourt;  and  the  people  on  the  other 
side  of  Mirecourt  heard  the  battle's  roar  recede  with 
a  feeling  of  thanksgiving  whose  devoutness  central 
or  southern  France  could  only  faintly  appreciate. 


36  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

When  you  know  Lorraine  it  seems  fitting  that  it 
should  have  given  Joan  of  Arc  to  France.  To-day 
you  may  still  see  such  peasant  girls  as  she  was, 
straight  as  young  birch  trees  with  eyes  wide  apart 
and  sensitive  mouths  and  firm  chins.  The  villages 
have  changed  little  since  she  tended  her  flocks  and 
the  character  of  the  people  is  much  the  same  as 
when  she  went  forth  from  shepherding  her  flocks 
to  lead  an  army.  From  high  ground  clusters  of 
red  roofs  break  into  view  on  the  rich  river  bottoms 
and  in  valleys  mottled  with  woodlands  and  pastures, 
but  proximity  removes  some  of  the  charm  and  pic- 
turesqueness  as  you  enter  narrow  streets  where 
manure  is  piled  in  front  of  the  house  door.  Local 
customs  in  this  respect  were  something  of  a  shock  to 
the  sons  of  progressive  American  farmers. 

Say  that  early  in  July  you  were  in  an  automobile 
that  had  left  a  Route  Nationale  for  a  winding  road 
that  played  hide  and  seek  with  a  winding  stream. 
A  village  slipped  by  and  you  saw  men  in  campaign 
hats  and  khaki  shirts  and  still  more  and  more  of 
them  in  the  villages  for  the  next  sixteen  miles.  This 
was  the  American  training  area,  and  the  inhabitants 
who  had  never  seen  even  tourist  Americans  to  speak 
to  them  might  marvel  at  the  dispensation  of  fortune 
which  had  made  them  the  hosts  of  the  American 
army.  It  was  a  surprise  to  some  of  them  that  we 
had  not  red  skins.  Our  names  were  puzzling.  Peo- 
ple to  whom  a  German  is  a  German  and  a  French- 
man is  a  Frenchman,  born  on  opposite  sides  of  a 
frontier  and  predestined  to  war,  might  wonder  how 
Private  Schmittberger  U.  S.  A.,  could  fight  on  the 
French  side. 


THEY  GO  TO  LORRAINE  37 

Our  theory  of  a  melting-pot,  amalgamating  all 
races  into  a  nation  which  was  ready  to  shed  its  blood 
for  the  cause  which  was  France's,  required  elucida- 
tion to  a  peasant  of  Lorraine  steeped  in  racial  an- 
tipathy. Even  educated  Frenchmen  were  appre- 
hensive lest  our  troops  include  German  sympathizers. 
The  convincing  answer  kept  to  practical  grounds. 
Didn't  Private  Schmittberger  look  as  American  as 
Private  Smith  or  De  la  Croix?  Weren't  there  Ger- 
man names  in  France,  particularly  in  Lorraine? 

The  best  time  to  make  the  run  through  our  area 
was  in  the  late  afternoon  when  the  companies  were 
mustered  for  evening  roll  call,  supple  shoulders 
showing  under  soft  khaki  shirts  and  features  with 
dry  skin  sharply  outlined,  inherently,  appealingly 
American  in  the  golden  light  of  the  evening  sun. 
Later,  you  saw  them  in  groups  about  the  doorways 
of  the  old  houses  in  the  dusk,  the  novelty  of  their 
presence  still  dominating  everything.  They  had 
made  that  valley  theirs  by  the  very  character  of 
their  uniforms  which  identified  any  man  in  silhouette 
to  the  eye  at  a  distance. 

Products  of  a  different  language  and  different 
customs,  introduced  into  strange  surroundings  and 
other  people's  homes,  we  must  play  a  worthy  part  as 
guests.  General  Orders  No.  7,  issued  on  July  3rd, 
had  in  mind  the  irritations  and  difficulties  that  might 
arise  from  the  peculiar  situation.  It  appealed  to 
the  self-respect  of  the  thoughtful  "  in  the  good  name 
of  the  United  States,"  with  a  reminder  for  the 
thoughtless  that  those  who  offended  would  be 
brought  to  trial  under  the  89th  Article  of  War. 
The  spirit  of  Lee's  order  to  his  army  upon  the  in- 


38  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

vasion  of  Pennsylvania  shone  through  this  order. 
It  was  expressive  of  our  idea  that  a  man's  house  is 
a  castle;  of  the  very  principle  for  which  we  were 
fighting  against  militarism. 

"  The  good  name  of  the  United  States  and  main- 
tenance of  cordial  relations  require  perfect  deport- 
ment of  each  member  of  this  command,"  the  order 
read  in  part.  "  It  is  of  the  gravest  importance  that 
the  soldiers  of  the  American  army  shall  at  all  times 
treat  the  people  of  France,  especially  the  women, 
with  the  greatest  courtesy  and  consideration.  The 
valiant  deeds  of  the  French  armies  and  those  of  her 
Allies,  by  which  they  have  together  successfully  main- 
tained their  common  cause  for  three  years,  and  the 
sacrifice  of  the  civil  population  of  France  in  the  sup- 
port of  their  armies,  command  our  profound  respect. 
This  can  best  be  expressed  on  the  part  of  our 
forces  by  uniform  courtesy  to  all  the  French 
people  and  by  faithful  observance  of  their  laws 
and  customs. 

"  Company  and  Detachment  commanders  will  in- 
form themselves  and  advise  their  men  as  to  local 
police  regulations  and  will  enforce  strict  observance 
thereof. 

"  The  infense  cultivation  of  the  soil  in  France 
and  the  conditions  caused  by  the  war  make  it  neces- 
sary that  extreme  care  be  taken  to  do  no  damage 
to  private  property.  The  entired  French  manhood 
capable  of  bearing  arms  is  in  the  field  fighting  the 
enemy.  Only  old  men,  women  and  children  remain 
to  cultivate  the  soil.  It  should,  therefore,  be  a  point 
of  honor  with  each  member  of  the  American  army 
to  avoid  doing  the  least  damage  to  any  property  in 


THEY  GO  TO  LORRAINE  39 

France.  Such  damage  is  much  more  reprehensible 
here  than  in  our  own  country." 

In  contravention  of  army  sanitary  regulations 
about  the  removal  of  such  nuisances,  did  this  warn- 
ing apply  to  the  manure  pile  whose  odors  pene- 
trated into  the  haymow  where  Privates  Schmitt- 
berger  and  Smith  had  their  home?  Their  grand- 
fathers would  not  have  minded.  Only  in  the  pres- 
ent generation  has  sanitation  become  a  cult  with  us, 
which  makes  our  nostrils  delicately  sensitive  and 
requires  sleeping  porches  lest  we  breathe  anything 
but  fresh  air.  Our  men  had  been  punched  or  vac- 
cinated for  every  known  disease  for  which  there  is 
an  injective  antidote.  They  were  bred  into  the  great 
bath-tub-filter-and-sanitary-plumbing  era,  no  less  than 
every  Frenchman  is  bred  into  his  antipathy  to  the 
German.  I  recollect  one  day  meeting  a  young  of- 
ficer, obviously  brought  up  in  cotton  wool,  who  had 
just  bought  a  siphon  of  seltzer  in  a  French  village. 

"  I  don't  dare  drink  this  local  water,"  he  said, 
"  so  I  bought  this  bottle.  Do  you  think  it  is  all 
right?" 

"  Didn't  you  have  your  typhoid  and  paratyphoid 
shots?  "  I  asked,  a  teasing  spirit  possessing  me  when 
I  saw  what  a  nice  chubby  young  man  he  was. 

"  Yes,  sir,  but  you  never  know."  ^ 

"  Aren't  you  wearing  your  meral  identification 
tag?  "  I  asked. 

"  Yes,  sir,  but " 

"  Well,  that  means  you  wouldn't  be  among  the 
unknown  when  the  casualty  list  goes  home,"  I  said. 
"  That  bottle  is  full  of  germs.  It's  been  in  the 
shop  accumulating  germs  for  years  waiting  for  you." 


40  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

"  Are  you  joking  with  me  ?  "  he  asked.  "  This  is 
a  serious  matter." 

He  was  expressive  of  an  extreme  that  amused  an 
old  civilization  with  its  meticulosity.  I  was  happy 
to  tell  him  that  our  bacteriological  experts  had  ex- 
amined the  local  water  supply  and  found  it  pure.  A 
year  later  the  young  man  had  lost  some  weight  from 
hard  training,  which  was  good  for  him,  but  he  was 
drinking  the  water  he  found  in  the  carafes  on  res- 
taurant tables — which  is  not  saying  that  the  infinite 
care  taken  about  the  health  of  our  army  is  not 
worth  while.  Rather,  it  confirms  the  triumphant 
fact  that  when  we  landed  we  brought  all  the  fine 
traditions  of  our  medical  corps  in  the  Philippines 
and  the  Caribbean  to  France,  and  all  the  directions 
of  loving  parents,  too. 

I  gasped  when  I  saw  one  of  our  army  wagons 
removing  a  manure  pile. 

"  Do  you  think  you  can  get  away  with  that  kind 
of  thing  in  France?"  I  asked. 

"  As  fast  as  we  can.  One  more  load  will  finish 
this  lot." 

They  were  dumping  it  outside  the  town,  without 
regard  to  whether  it  was  on  the  owner's  premises 
or  not,  I  fear.  The  resulting  disturbance  of  inter- 
national relations  required  that  French  liaison  of- 
ficers exert  to  fie  fullest  their  diplomatic  influence. 
We  were  ready  to  pay  for  the  damage  done  and 
were  Americans,  to  whom  much  was  forgiven.  Curi- 
osity as  to  our  character  and  doings  exerted  a  lenient 
influence.  If  we  wanted  to  sweep  the  streets  and  pick 
up  every  little  bit  of  paper  and  remove  every  bit 
of  rubbish  in  sight,  why,  the  inhabitants  respected 


THEY  GO  TO  LORRAINE  41 

our  army  and  customs  as  we  were  supposed  to  respect 
theirs — respected  them  more,  perhaps,  than  would 
many  an  American  community  where  the  painstaking 
hand  of  sanitary  military  discipline  has  not  de- 
scended. 

The  remainder  of  the  general  order  about  the 
absence  of  able-bodied  men  referred  to  a  fact  which 
was  most  appealing  to  our  soldiers;  a  fact  brought 
home  to  them  in  every  village.  France  was  not  ex- 
pecting others  to  fight  for  her  without  fighting  her- 
self. Besides,  we  had  a  new  lesson  in  industry — 
we  who  had  thought  of  ourselves  as  an  industrious 
people.  When  reveille  sounded  the  family  was  al- 
ready awake  and  young  boys  and  every  old  man 
and  woman  who  could  hobble  starting  out  for  work 
in  the  fields.  We  saw  afresh  and  vividly,  as  I  have 
said,  the  things  which  were  old  to  those  who  had 
been  in  Europe  since  the  start  of  the  war;  how  no 
description  could  make  you  realize  the  tremendous 
conflict  and  the  penetration  of  its  influence  into  every 
heart,  every  house,  every  blade  of  grass;  how  sacri- 
fice was  borne  stoically  and  cheerfully. 

Soldiers,  who  seem  to  acquire  the  simplicity  of 
children,  are  fond  of  children;  innocence  takes  the 
mind  away  from  the  monotony  of  drill  and  the  moil 
of  the  trenches.  The  men  prefer  the  admiration  of 
children  to  the  cheers  of  a  crowd  for  their  heroism, 
and  "  kid  talk "  to  recounting  exploits  to  adult 
admirers.  The  spell  which  the  children  of  France 
exerted  over  every  soldier  from  the  first  was  not 
alone  due  to  the  sympathy  which  their  smiles,  or  the 
smiles  of  their  mothers  for  the  future's  sake  when 
the  husband  was  dead  on  the  field  of  honor,  aroused 


42  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

on  the  background  of  war.  We  found  that  whether 
the  children  came  from  chateau  or  from  alleys,  they 
had  as  a  birthright  that  indescribable  thing  most  dif- 
ficult of  acquirement  and  most  truly  French — charm. 
Their  parents  had  thrift,  too.  It  was  from  children 
that  the  soldiers  largely  learned  their  French, 
though  not  in  the  manner  of  a  powerfully  built  cor- 
poral I  have  in  mind  seated  in  a  doorway,  knotting 
his  brows  over  his  primer  which  made  French  easy 
in  a  few  lessons.  He  drew  up  on  his  lap,  much  as 
a  big  dog  would  lift  a  puppy,  a  little  girl  who  had 
been  sitting  at  his  feet,  regarding  him  as  she  would 
an  inhabitant  from  another  world. 

"Say,  kid,  is  this  right?"  he  asked,  as  he  read 
off  an  exercise  according  to  his  own  phonetic  pro- 
nunciation. 

"  Oui!  Out!  "  said  the  child,  who  thought  that 
he  was  still  speaking  English;  and  thus  they  con- 
tinued the  lesson  happily  together. 


iV 


HARD  TRAINING 


The  sentry  at  Headquarters — A  true  soldier  of  France — A  head- 
quarters at  school — 'Leavenworth  and  the  chasseurs  alfins — 
Drill,  drill,  and  more  drill — Baseball  and  bomb  throwing  not 
identical — French  teachers  and  American  scholars — Funda- 
mentals and  fine  points  of  training — Our  artillery  begins  to 
learn. 


If  we  wished  to  hide  our  division  in  France  and 
make  its  training  a  matter  of  strict  family  secrecy 
we  could  not  have  chosen  a  better  retreat  than  the 
folds  of  the  Lorraine  landscape.  The  only  his- 
trionic effect  about  the  division  headquarters,  which 
was  located  in  a  house  up  a  side  street  of  the  largest 
of  the  villages  in  our  area,  was  the  chasseur  alpin 
who  stood  sentry  at  its  entrance.  He  was  a  par- 
ticularly fine  specimen  of  that  famous  corps  of 
mountain  fighters,  the  Blue  Devils.  His  rakish  blue 
Tam  O'Shanter  cap  set  off  a  certain  self-conscious- 
ness of  the  honor  which  was  his  as  the  result  of  his 
heroic  exploits.  Dust  on  the  dustiest  days  seemed 
never  to  cling  to  his  blouse;  he  looked  always  fresh, 
cool  and  on  the  qui  vive. 

Napoleon  and  the  great  Conde  and  d'Artagnan 
would  have  approved  of  him  as  having  the  true  elan 
of  a  French  warrior.  Meissonier  and  Detaille 
would  not  have  required  any  further  posing  before 

43 


44  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

painting  him.  The  more  times  he  had  to  present 
arms  the  better  it  seemed  to  please  him;  and  he 
seemed  always  to  put  into  the  formality  something 
of  the  spirit  of  a  Coquelin  in  his  first  pass  in  a  stage 
duel.  Officers  who  answered  his  salute  thought  that 
with  a  miUion  such  they  might  conquer  the  world; 
American  soldiers  who  had  not  yet  looked  over  a 
trench  parapet  saw  in  him  the  miraculous  survivor 
of  three  years'  fighting.  He  was  truly  a  mighty 
man;  and  by  the  criterion  of  his  presence  one  might 
expect  to  find  inside  headquarters  the  clicking  to- 
gether of  heels  and  the  summary  commands  of  the 
hour  of  battle. 

Turn  to  the  right  as  you  entered  headquarters, 
and,  at  the  little  table  next  the  door,  sat  the  adju- 
tant. He  was  a  kind  and  patient  man,  or  he  would 
never  have  attempted  to  answer  half  the  questions 
asked  him.  Next  to  him  at  another  small  table  was 
one  of  the  division  commander's  aides,  who  was  so 
good-natured  in  those  trying  days  that  he  was  later 
put  in  charge  of  transportation,  with  malice  pre- 
pense, I  think,  to  see  if  an  unacclimatized  mule  train 
would  not  make  him  lose  his  temper.  It  did,  occa- 
sionally. A  French  interpreter  and  the  one  priceless 
field  clerk  and  his  typewriter  completed  the  personnel 
In  this  room.  In  the  adjoining  one,  with  the  door 
always  open,  sat  Major  General  William  L.  Sibert, 
then  commanding  the  division,  and,  in  the  corner,  his 
Chief  of  Staff. 

Upstairs  were  junior  officers  up  to  their  ears  in 
French  documents  on  tactics  and  drill,  which,  with 
the  help  of  a  French  interpreter  and  a  French  of- 
ficer, they  were  turning  into  English.     No  maps  of 


HARD  TRAINING  45 

trenches  on  the  walls !  No  reports  of  actions  from 
the  front!  It  was  like  no  other  division  headquar- 
ters in  France. 

The  dreamers  at  General  Headquarters  might 
make  their  project  for  an  ultimate  one  or  two  or 
three  million  men,  but  here  rested  the  concrete  re- 
sponsibility of  speedily  getting  a  few  thousand  men 
ready  for  the  trenches. 

Leavenworth  and  the  French  Chasseurs  co- 
operated in  the  task.  Who  had  ever  heard  of  our 
army  school  of  the  Line  and  Staff  College  at  Leaven- 
worth before  we  entered  the  war,  let  alone  consid- 
ered what  influence  it  might  have  on  the  destinies 
of  the  world?  Even  the  average  citizen  of  adjacent 
Kansas  City  had  little  idea  of  what  was  going  on 
in  that  army  post.  In  the  midst  of  the  wheat  fields 
of  Kansas,  officers  of  mature  years  became  stu- 
dents again,  striving  by  ten  or  twelve  hours'  ap- 
plication a  day  to  be  graduated  with  honors.  If 
we  had  no  armies  to  maneuver  in  fact,  they  would 
maneuver  imaginary  armies.  They  worked  over  the 
details  of  organization  and  combat;  prepared  prob- 
lems for  solution;  moved  their  units  in  attack  and 
retreat;  besieged  fortresses  and  sent  out  flying 
expeditions  against  guerillas — all  in  the  fascina- 
tion of  the  "  war  game  "  to  zealous  professional 
minds. 

What  algebra,  trigonometry  and  calculus  are  to 
the  engineers,  what  the  Beaux  Arts  is  to  the  archi- 
tect, that  course  was  to  them.  It  developed  powers 
of  application;  opened  the  doors  of  understanding  to 
the  problems  of  real  war;  engendered  appreciation 
of  the  infinitely  complicated  business  of  the  feeding 


46  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

and  movement  of  great  masses  of  men  as  a  homo- 
geneous force. 

The  first  training  orders  of  the  First  Division  set 
the  command's  working  hours  as  eight  with  Sunday 
and  Saturday  afternoon  free.  "  All  possible  means," 
it  said,  "  will  be  employed  with  the  utmost  vigor 
to  improve  the  appearance,  military  bearing  and 
spirit  of  the  officers  and  soldiers  of  this  command." 
Physical  drill,  close  order  drill  and  marches  of  not 
more  than  two  hours  a  day  were  the  initial  pre- 
scription for  stiffening  backs  with  layers  of  muscle 
and  establishing  the  sense  of  obedience  and  co- 
ordination. And  then  the  salute.  That  seems  a 
kind  of  formality  which  has  little  to  do  with  killing 
the  enemy,  but  it  is  the  a  b  c  of  discipline.  Veterans 
may  be  careless  about  it  and  still  be  efficient,  per- 
haps, though  they  set  a  bad  example  and  open  the 
way  to  their  own  deterioration.  Novices,  at  least, 
may  not  neglect  this  essential  of  inculcating  that 
instinctive  subordination  which  is  requisite  if  orders 
are  to  be  obeyed. 

The  First  Division  had  been  no  further  advanced 
in  the  fundamentals  of  training  than  the  other  reg- 
ular divisions  at  home,  which  had  the  same  propor- 
tion of  recruits.  It  had  lost  time  in  transit,  with 
military  deportment  and  physical  condition  suffering 
on  the  long  voyage;  but  now  it  was  actually  in 
France,  actually  in  the  theater  of  war,  where  uncon- 
sciously it  would  absorb  the  lessons  of  war.  The 
imposition  of  discipline  was  easy  in  an  isolated  com- 
munity dissociated  from  any  except  military  influence. 

Our  officers  could  learn  first  hand  what  part  of 
their  old  teachings  they  must  discard,  and  they  were 


HARD  TRAINING  47 

often  to  be  puzzled  by  the  difference  of  opinion  of 
the  experts  on  the  spot.  What  was  approved  one 
month  might  not  be  the  next.  The  success  of  some 
change  of  tactics  at  the  front  meant  a  new  fashion 
in  training;  for  in  nothing  is  the  criterion  of  success 
so  mandatory  as  in  war.  Wh^re,  at  home,  instruc- 
tion was  under  the  advice  of  a  few  Allied  officers 
in  each  camp,  men  in  France  had  the  advantage, 
in  place  of  class-room  recital  and  lectures,  of  private 
tutoring  by  a  force  of  chasseurs  alpins  who  were 
billeted  in  the  villages  of  a  road  that  ran  parallel 
to  ours. 

Thus  settled  in  their  summer  homes  the  grind 
began.  As  one  of  our  soldiers  said,  if  he  had  known 
that  four  months  of  such  drudgery  was  coming,  he 
would  have  left  his  part  in  making  the  world  safe 
for  democracy  to  Kerensky.  The  training  section 
of  the  General  Staff  did  not  think  there  was  any 
road  to  efficiency  but  drill  and  more  drill.  Notice 
was  served  that  we  were  through  with  the  idea 
that  a  milfion  men  in  shirt  sleeves  could  spring  to 
arms  and  overwhelm  any  power  that  dared  to 
threaten  us. 

Every  morning,  soon  after  dawn,  instructors  and 
pupils  marched  out  from  their  billeting  areas  to  the 
training  grounds,  where  the  picture  in  the  early  days 
suggested  the  first  preparations  for  some  great 
pageant  in  the  instruction  of  small  groups  as  a  pre- 
lude to  general  rehearsals.  French  talent  for  panto- 
mime made  up  for  the  want  of  a  common  tongue. 
After  the  chasseurs  had  given  an  exhibition  of  how 
a  thing  was  done,  they  watched  us  try  to  imitate  their 
proficiency  and  corrected  our  mistakes.      Blue  cap 


48  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

and  campaign  hat  nodded  together  over  a  lesson  in 
the  use  of  the  automatic  rifle  or  the  machine  gun. 

We  were  tenderfeet  in  a  strange  land  and  we 
knew  it.  The  chasseurs  knew  it,  too.  They  got  a 
subtle  enjoyment  out  of  the  privileges  of  teaching 
us  fundamentals  which  will  furnish  them  with  as 
interesting  yarns  as  their  battles  for  their  grand- 
children in  days  to  come.  We  admired  them  because 
they  knew  their  business — which  is  the  highest  of 
compliments  to  our  practical  American  minds. 

If  we  did  not  find  as  much  fun  in  the  curriculum 
as  they,  that  was  only  the  misfortune  of  the  learner 
at  any  game.  Our  regret  was  that  they  had  every- 
thing to  show  us  and  we  had  nothing  to  show  them 
in  return.  We  thought  that  the  tables  would  be 
turned  by  our  baseball  training  when  it  came  to 
throwing  hand  grenades;  and  they  would  have  been 
if  a  baseball  and  a  hand  grenade  were  of  the  same 
weight.  As  they  are  not,  strained  arms  soon  con- 
vinced us  that  the  overhand  bowling  throw  was  the 
best;  and  you  must  learn  that,  too,  according  to  an 
exact  system,  as  you  had  to  learn  everything  else 
from  the  standardized  experience  of  trench  warfare. 

Pantomime  had  its  limitations  even  in  the  demon- 
stration of  physical  action.  You  not  only  want  the 
golf  teacher  to  show  you  how  to  make  the  stroke, 
but  to  tell  you  the  theory  of  it  and  the  reason  for 
It.  The  language  difficulty  only  increased  French 
politeness,  whether  the  instructor  spoke  English  him- 
self or  acted  through  an  interpreter.  Sometimes  we 
were  praised  as  the  most  wonderful  of  students, 
when  our  regular  officers  had  an  idea  that  progress 
was  partly  due  to  the  fact  that  they  had  been  pretty 


HARD  TRAINING  49 

well  grounded  in  the  military  rudiments  before  they 
came  to  France.  What  they  wanted  was  a  straight- 
out-from-the-shoulder  criticism  such  as  they  were  ac- 
customed to  make  among  themselves. 

"  Is  what  the  French  say  just  kidding  Lafayette 
stuff  or  are  we  really  prodigies?  "  exclaimed  an  of- 
ficer, after  he  had  been  the  recipient  of  a  panegyric 
through  an  interpreter;  for  compared  to  the  way 
the  chasseurs  carried  out  the  movement  it  looked 
to  him  as  if  his  men  belonged  to  the  bush  league. 

"  Come  on,  now,  put  more  pep  into  it!  "  American 
voices  rang  out.     "  That's  better." 

Baseball  might  not  help  us  to  throw  hand  gre- 
nades, but  the  baseball  spirit  was  there.  Pride  and 
ambition  urged  on  our  efforts.  When  noon  came 
sharp  appetites  welcomed  luncheon  and  tired  mus- 
cles welcomed  rest  as  the  men  dropped  to  earth. 
Usually  we  formed  groups  by  ourselves  and  the 
French  by  themselves.  Masters  and  pupils  had  had 
enough  language  effort  in  school  hours  without  con- 
tinuing it  in  periods  of  relaxation.  To  labor  in 
French  when  you  are  dog  tired  is  a  little  more  than 
you  or  your  auditor  can  bear. 

There  was  not  much  drill  in  the  afternoon.  Work 
must  halt  when  staleness  and  weariness  reached  a 
point  where  the  spur  of  will  defeated  its  own  pur- 
pose. There  was  the  homeward  march  to  make  and 
fatigue  details  to  be  performed  in  the  villages. 
After  supper,  in  the  cool  of  the  evening,  were  more 
French  lessons  from  the  women  and  children  in  the 
doorways;  and  then,  up  the  ladder  into  the  barn  loft, 
to  be  turned  out  again  at  dawn  to  march  to  another 
day  of  school. 


50  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

As  thoroughly  as  doctors  study  their  patients  the 
men  were  studied  in  order  to  gain  the  maximum  of 
results;  and  soldier  psychology  played  a  part. 
Many  of  the  men  had  the  idea  that  the  war  would 
be  over  before  they  would  ever  get  into  the  trenches; 
that  all  this  drilling  would  be  as  futile  as  carrying 
water  from  a  creek  to  the  top  of  a  hill  and  allowing 
it  to  flow  back  into  the  creek.  The  British  New 
Army  battalions  were  possessed  with  the  same  il- 
lusion in  the  fall  of  19 14  and  also  many  of  the 
recruits  in  our  Civil  War.  Homesickness,  too,  ap- 
peared— with  many  circumstances  to  develop  it. 

Had  Washington  forgotten  us?  Were  we  only 
a  sentimental,  a  diplomatic  army?  Officers  found  it 
hard  to  think  otherwise,  considering  the  things 
ordered  which  did  not  arrive.  Their  troubles  were 
not  confined  to  their  work  with  the  men  and  to 
"  paper  work  "  half  the  night.  Some  were  associ- 
ated with  the  quartermaster  in  the  schoolhouse  in 
headquarters  town.  It  might  be  a  gratifying  thing 
for  him  to  consider  the  resources  of  the  United 
States,  but  it  did  not  solve  his  problems  of  transport. 
A  small  barrack  building  had  been  erected  as  his 
depot  over  by  the  railroad  station — the  Nestor  of  all 
the  depots.  He  was  glad  to  issue  or  to  sell  anything 
he  had  to  anybody  in  uniform  and  he  would  send 
telegrams  down  the  line  to  hurry  up  consignments 
and  try  to  do  anything  else  you  wanted  him  to  do, 
except  the  impossible.  He  was  perfectly  willing  to 
try  that  again,  but  by  the  criterion  of  past  ex- 
perience coulB  hold  out  no  promises  of  satisfac- 
tory results. 

When  the  men  ran  short  of  smoking  tobacco  for 


HARD  TRAINING  51 

a  while,  French  cigarettes  did  not  take  the  place  of 
the  "  makings."  The  news  that  a  consignment  of 
baseball  equipment  had  gone  down  at  sea  was  a 
tragedy ;  and  they  could  not  buy  the  little  things  they 
liked,  toilet  soap,  gum,  candy.  Letters  were  long 
in  coming  from  home — that  hurt  most.  When  a 
letter  was  received,  well  it  brought  up  visions  of 
the  soda  water  fountain  in  the  corner  drug  store, 
and  the  local  league  scores,  the  family  and  kids  and 
what  your  friends  were  doing.  This  great  adven- 
ture stuff  was  all  right,  but  it  did  not  make  you 
feel  any  less  like  a  stranded  orphan  child  far  away 
in  Lorraine.  However,  play  the  game  and  don't 
fail  to  salute  your  superior  officer.  He  salutes  his 
superior  who  salutes  Pershing,  who  salutes  the  Presi- 
dent whom  you  elected  to  give  you  orders  to  salute 
in  time  of  war. 

There  was  some  consolation  that  as  the  training 
advanced  it  became  more  interesting  and  varied. 
From  the  first  reader  we  went  to  the  second;  from 
arithmetic  to  algebra;  from  exercises  to  problems 
and  maneuvers.  In  fact  we  had  relief  from  practice 
strokes  and  were  allowed  to  play  around  the  course. 
When  the  French  advanced  under  a  barrage  to  the 
attack  to  show  us  how  an  attack  was  to  be  made 
and  we  repeated  the  maneuver  with  shells  sweeping 
over  our  heads — this  was  something  like.  But  it 
did  not  mean  that  we  were  going  into  the  trenches 
yet.  We  were  back  at  practicing  strokes  again  in 
the  different  schools  of  specialism. 

Our  officers  visited  the  French  front  to  see  in 
practice  what  they  were  learning  in  theory.  They 
heard  lectures  and  still  more  lectures.    The  training 


52  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

was  having  its  effect  on  them  no  less  than  on  the 
men.  Surplus  adipose  had  evaporated  under  rigor- 
ous exercise.  Figures  were  more  perpendicularly 
formal  when  they  saluted  and  bodies  had  more 
litheness  in  rushing  a  machine  gun  up  a  trench. 
Young  reserve  officers  became  sure  of  themselves. 
What  a  transformation  when  the  command  ap- 
peared in  steel  helmets  in  place  of  campaign  hats ! 
It  led  friends  when  they  met  to  say:  "  Introduce  me 
to  the  stranger !  "  Anybody  who  accepted  the  hel- 
mets as  a  sure  sign  that  now  we  were  really  going  to 
see  action  was  disillusioned  upon  learning  that  rank 
and  file  must  become  accustomed  to  wearing  them,  as 
well  as  to  the  use  of  gas  masks. 

Meanwhile,  the  division's  brigade  of  artillery  ar- 
rived and  was  going  through  its  paces  on  a  French 
artillery  training  ground  under  Major  General  Pey- 
ton C.  March.  Its  percentage  of  recruits  was  as 
high  as  that  of  the  infantry  regiments;  for  we  had 
scattered  our  regular  artillerymen  as  schoolmasters 
as  broadcast  as  our  infantrymen.  These  recruits 
were  supplied  with  the  French  75mm.  field  gun  and 
the  French  155,  while  the  example  of  proficiency  to 
be  achieved  in  artillery  was  the  most  impressive,  in 
view  of  the  traditions  of  French  gunnery  from  Na- 
poleon's time,  and  its  development  in  this  war.  A 
French  battery  in  action  is  an  expression  of  all  the 
finesse  of  French  artillery  spirit  and  character.  The 
veteran  gunners  do  not  bother  to  swagger.  They 
take  it  for  granted  that  they  are  masters  of  their 
art.  Their  discipline  is  that  of  the  coordination  of 
perfect  appreciation  of  each  man  of  his  part  and  of 
the  professional  confidence  of  the  expert. 


HARD  TRAINING  53 

"  We  breed  gunners  in  France,"  said  a  French 
officer. 

All  the  world  knows  by  this  time  the  system  of 
modern  artillery  fire  and  how  it  symbolizes  the 
science  and  the  painstaking  detail  of  modern  war. 
The  gunners,  never  seeing  their  target,  are  in  the 
position  of  the  engineers  in  the  bowels  of  a  cruiser 
answering  the  captain's  call  from  the  bridge.  Our 
men  might  go  through  the  prescribed  drill  quite  to 
their  own  satisfaction  only  to  be  shocked  by  the 
poor  results  of  their  shooting.  They  would  have 
been  more  shocked  if  they  could  have  seen  a  motion 
picture  of  their  own  movements  compared  to  those 
of  French  veterans.  We  might  know  the  theory, 
but  the  stroke  we  could  achieve  only  by  practice 
which  would  make  the  gun  become  a  living  thing  to 
us  as  it  was  to  the  French,  who,  on  the  fields  of  the 
Marne  and  Lorraine,  had  saved  France  with  their 
artillery  genius.  We  must  have  the  gun's  nerves 
of  steel  and  our  human  nerves  must  flow  into  its 
steel.  The  hand  that  swung  the  breechblock  must 
be  welded  to  it  by  an  electric  touch  of  understanding. 

A  gunner's  reasons  for  training  hard  are  as  dis- 
tinct as  a  blood-red  spot  on  a  white  bandage.  A 
slip  on  his  part  is  as  fatal  as  that  of  a  surgeon's 
knife.  His  responsibility  there  in  the  gun  pit  is 
accuracy — the  accuracy  of  every  unit  of  a  chorus  of 
batteries  in  laying  a  swath  of  protection  for  ad- 
vancing infantry,  or  in  withering  the  enemy's  ad- 
vance with  their  blasts.  Inaccuracy  simply  means 
that  you  are  killing  your  own  comrades  instead  of 
the  enemy. 

The  responsibility  of  those  who  give  orders  from 


54  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  other  end  of  the  telephone,  even  heavier,  is  that 
of  science  and  judgment  which  are  no  less  wrought 
of  experience  as  the  final  instructor.  Consider  the 
difference  between  gunnery  in  August,  19 14,  and 
August,  19 1 7,  though  the  French  field  gun  had  not 
changed,  and  you  span  the  developments  in  naviga- 
tion between  Columbus'  day  and  the  present.  Shell 
bursts  are  moved  here  and  there  as  you  move  pins 
on  a  map.  You  turn  on  one  battery  or  a  hundred 
batteries,  disposing  their  shots  according  to  the  pat- 
tern required  by  the  situation.  It  is  science  with 
the  fascination  of  magic;  but  science  subject  to 
human  error,  in  a  combination  of  the  intricacies  of 
observation  and  calculation  which  leaves  nothing 
atmospheric,  nothing  terrestrial,  nothing  that  eye 
can  see  or  brain  can  conceive  out  of  account.  Sound 
ranging,  whereby  you  plot  the  position  of  an 
enemy's  gun  through  locating  the  sound  of  its  blast, 
was  nursed  through  the  infancy  of  experiments,  until 
it  became  a  most  important  branch  of  artillery 
science. 

On  the  other  side  of  No  Man's  Land  the  other 
fellow  conceals  his  guns,  and  on  your  side  yours  are 
set  like  chessmen  on  the  board  under  your  hand 
playing  against  moves  behind  his  screen,  where  thou- 
sands of  monsters  in  their  lairs  may  have  cunningly 
scattered  their  shots  in  registering  on  their  chosen 
targets  before,  at  the  given  moment,  all  turn  loose 
their  thunders  in  the  preparation  for  an  attack.  If 
you  could  know  where  each  of  his  guns  are  located, 
your  guns  could  silence  his  fire  gun  for  gun. 

This,  of  course,  is  only  repeating  what  has  been 
often  told  before,  with  the  conscious  aim  of  con- 


HARD  TRAINING  55 

veying  the  nature  of  the  undertaking  in  making 
artillery  beginners,  officers  and  men,  with  their 
groundwork  of  theory  sufficiently  trained  practi- 
tioners to  be  allowed  at  the  front.  It  is  one  thing 
to  hit  the  target,  another  to  make  an  accurate  bar- 
rage, and  both  are  a  long  way  from  acquiring  all  the 
"  business  "  which  written  texts  or  word  of  mouth 
cannot  explain;  a  very  long  way  from  sure  judg- 
ment in  the  test  of  battle,  reenforced  by  the  sys- 
tematic control  of  observation  and  transmission  of 
information,  which  knows  where  to  place  the  bar- 
rage and  when  to  lift  it,  what  calibers  for  that  pur- 
pose and  what  for  this,  and  with  all  dependent 
upon  that  promptness  and  accuracy  at  any  hour,  day 
or  night,  from  the  batteries  which  must  fit  action 
nicely  with  plan  when  delay  may  reckon  its  costs  in 
lives. 

Thus,  the  gunners  in  their  camp  learned  their 
first  lessons  and  the  infantry  in  their  camps  learned 
theirs,  waiting  on  the  day  when  the  guns  should  go 
into  position  behind  the  infantry  In  face  of  the  enemy 
to  form  a  unit  of  action.  Both  branches  were  im- 
patient; and  their  impatience  was  valuable  in  so  far 
as  it  was  transformed  Into  application  which  would 
hasten  the  fruition  of  their  desire.  It  was  for  these 
pioneers  to  set  the  traditions  of  thoroughness,  when 
thoroughness  is  less  our  national  characteristic  than 
resource,  quickness  and  initiative,  some  critics  say. 
If  so,  this  was  the  more  reason  for  the  restraint  of 
the  judges  in  training  as  they  waited  for  the  temper 
of  the  human  steel  to  set. 


VI 

A  BLUE   PRINT  ERA 

Laying  plans  for  the  construction  of  a  giant — France  a  sheet  of 
white  paper  whereon  we  had  to  write  our  undertaking — 
Necessary  to  bring  our  own  war  materials — Early  regiments 
of  American  railway  employees  and  lumber  men — Clubbing 
together  with  France  and  England  to  obtain  material  in  the 
quickest  time — Negro  roustabouts  to  the  rescue — American 
railroad  officials  rushed  to  France  to  direct  our  transportation 
— Big  plans  and  slow  fulfillment — Beginning  to  carry  through 
an  enterprise  greater  than  building  the  Panama  Canal. 

If  we  are  to  have  a  complete  picture  of  what 
America  was  doing  in  France  at  this  time  we  must 
consider  other  stages  of  preparation  which  ran  cur- 
rent with  the  early  stages  of  training  of  the  troops. 
General  Pershing's  headquarters  had  to  remain  in 
Paris  through  July  and  August  in  order  to  be  at  a 
central  point  for  administration;  or,  rather,  for  the 
establishing  and  developing  of  something  to  admin- 
ister. With  its  texts  set,  the  First  Division  might 
proceed  with  its  lessons.  The  General  had  to  pre- 
pare for  the  other  divisions  which  were  to  come. 

Even  the  skeleton  of  the  project  which  we  had 
planned  existed  as  yet  only  as  a  blue  print.  We  must 
make  the  bones  of  this  giant  before  we  could  articu- 
late them  and  attach  flesh  and  mucles  and  provide 
a  brain  and  a  circulatory  system.  He  must  have 
nerves  enough  but  not  too  many,  and  his  legs  must 

56 


A  BLUE  PRINT  ERA  57 

not  be  too  long  for  his  body  or  his  body  too  large 
for  his  heart.  His  form  and  character,  his  morals 
and  morale,  his  efficiency  and  spirit  required  that 
scientific  building  should  follow  scientific  plans,  with 
such  supplies  of  labor  and  material  as  were  available. 
Secretary  Baker  had  expressed  our  situation  in  a 
phrase  when  he  said  that  France  was  a  sheet  of  white 
paper  whereon  we  had  to  write  our  undertaking. 

Exclusive  of  Krupps  and  her  other  plants  which 
she  had  developed  for  this  war,  Germany,  as  a  manu- 
'facturing  country  in  the  all-round  sense,  was  better 
adapted  for  meeting  war  requirements  than  Britain 
or  France.  Russia  was  almost  entirely,  and  Serbia 
and  Rumania  entirely,  agricultural.  Italy  had 
neither  coal  nor  iron.  The  black  country  of  France 
passed  into  German  hands  early  in  the  war.  De- 
pending upon  the  possession  of  the  sea  routes  of  the 
world  as  a  guarantee  of  munitions  which  should 
overwhelm  the  besieged  Central  Powers,  the  Allies 
were  losing  ships  faster  than  they  were  being  built. 

Our  own  resources  had  already  been  stretched 
in  filling  the  war  orders  that  had  lifted  us  out  of 
an  era  of  hard  times  into  an  era  of  plethoric  trade 
balances  and  banking  reserves.  When  we  entered 
the  war,  cargoes  were  piled  upon  our  piers  awaiting 
transport  across  the  Atlantic.  Men  labored  in  the 
fields  of  Kansas  to  produce  grain  and  in  our  plants 
and  factories  to  produce  material  which  passed  into 
the  shark's  maw  of  the  U-boats.  Destruction  was 
everywhere  overwhelming  construction. 

For  three  years  all  the  able-bodied  young  men 
of  France  had  been  non-productive.  Available  labor 
had  been  diverted  from  peace  to  war  requirements. 


58  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Crops  were  sown  and  reaped,  but  weeds  crept  into 
the  fields  for  lack  of  proper  husbandry.  Upkeep 
was  everywhere  neglected,  except  under  the  direc- 
tion of  military  necessity;  and  French  no  less  than 
German  railways  had  deteriorated  both  in  rolling 
stock  and  roadbeds. 

Our  untrained  army  could  not  expect  material 
from  the  French  which  they  needed  for  their  own 
trained  army.  We  who  were  in  France  did  not 
need  to  wait  on  the  Russian  collapse  or  the  Italian 
defeat  on  the  Isonzo  for  an  appreciation  of  the 
nature  of  a  situation  which  characterized  Germany's 
peace  proposals  as  a  subterfuge  to  lull  the  Allies 
into  a  false  conviction  of  her  weakness,  while  she 
worked  out  her  plans.  The  proposed  pooling  of 
Alhed  resources,  a  favorite  subject  of  inter-allied 
conference  and  journalistic  suggestion,  now  had  a 
practical  application  in  certain  adjustments,  through 
French  and  American  military  authorities,  whereby 
we  supplied  France  with  what  we  could  spare  and 
she  supplied  us  with  what  she  could  spare. 

We  had  skilled  labor  at  home,  untrained  in  war, 
which  could  release  her  skilled  labor  trained  in  war 
to  go  to  the  front.  Indeed,  Joffre's  first  call  had 
been  for  railway  engineers.  The  pioneer  regiment 
dispatched  in  haste,  illy  equipped,  was  so  useful  that 
word  was  sent  home  for  the  organization  of  more  of 
these  regiments,  which,  as  fast  as  they  arrived,  were 
distributed  about  France.  They  adapted  themselves 
to  the  strange  business  of  running  trains  according 
to  the  French  railroad  system,  or,  set  to  the  hard 
labor  which  is  the  initiation  of  immigrants  into  our 
"  melting-pot,"  they  plied  pick  and  shovel  on  con- 


A  BLUE  PRINT  ERA  59 

struction  work,  their  occupation  glorified  by  the  fact 
that  they  were  helping  to  make  war  in  France. 

Tonnage  for  the  shipment  of  lumber  for  our  bar- 
racks and  other  structures  could  be  saved  if  we 
transferred  lumbermen  from  our  primitive  forests 
of  the  Northwest  to  the  cultivated  forests  of  France. 
For  lighter  unskilled  work  France  could  offer  us 
invalided  soldiers,  men  too  old  for  the  trenches,  or 
German  prisoners,  who  might  have  to  be  taken  from 
the  fields,  leaving  a  heavier  burden  on  the  old  men 
and  women  and  children,  or  from  the  repair  of  the 
roads,  which  must  be  kept  in  condition  for  army 
transport  by  the  continued  attention  of  those  blue- 
coated  territorials  who  stand  to  one  side  from  their 
labor  as  the  cars  pass. 

If  we  sent  locomotives  and  rolling  stock  to 
France,  she  could  lease  us  any  buildings  not  in  use 
to  house  our  personnel.  In  return  for  our  meat  and 
grain  we  could  buy  vegetables  from  her  gardens; 
and,  incidentally,  that  French  hen,  the  mother  of 
the  omelet  of  France,  had  survived  the  ravages  of 
automobiles  in  sufficient  numbers  to  keep  up  an 
amazing  supply  of  fresh  eggs.  She  seemed  to  real- 
ize her  duty  to  her  country  and  by  her  devotion  to 
it  in  winter  months  defied  cold  storage  monopolies, 
though  not  that  continual  rise  in  prices  which  every 
shopkeeper  excused  by  saying,  "  It  is  the  war." 

France  could  make  planes  for  our  aviators  in 
training  until  the  Liberty  Plane  arrived.  In  the 
same  way  we  secured  the  equipment  of  our  artillery 
until  we  should  produce  guns  of  the  French  models 
which  were  to  take  the  place  of  our  own.  The  steel 
billets  which  France  had  from  us  were  forged  into 


6o  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

75's  and  155's  by  French  arsenals  which  had  been 
developed  to  abundant  capacity.  British  plants,  al- 
ready in  operation,  could  supply  us  with  steel  hel- 
mets and  with  gas  masks  until  we  were  making  our 
own  models  in  sufficient  quantity.  There  might  be 
no  q'  estion  of  the  superiority  of  our  Browning  ma- 
chine gun,  but  until  it  was  produced  in  numbers  we 
must  depend  on  French  machine  guns  and  automatic 
rifles.  Every  horse  for  our  guns  and  transport 
which  we  could  buy  in  France  meant  additional  space 
on  board  ship  for  transporting  troops.  Thus,  by 
clubbing  together,  the  Allies  fitted  out  our  forces 
with  such  things  as  we  lacked.  It  was  a  patchwork 
kind  of  business  which  had  to  consider  "  priority  " 
from  many  angles  of  influence  and  administra- 
tion. 

When  every  day's  delay  in  unloading  ships  meant 
waste  in  tonnage  by  increasing  the  time  of  the  "  turn- 
around " — that  besetting  phrase  of  the  tonnage  ex- 
perts— there  was  a  demand  for  something  sturdier 
than  Frenchmen,  who  were  not  able-bodied  enough 
to  fight  for  the  business  of  putting  cargo  on  shore 
and  handHng  it  after  it  was  on  shore.  The  powers 
of  darkness  came  to  the  rescue  when  word  of  the 
situation  was  carried  to  the  banks  of  the  Missis- 
sippi. There  was  nothing  aenemic  about  the  cohorts 
from  the  levees,  the  first  men  from  national  draft, 
I  believe,  to  arrive  in  France. 

Certainly,  the  process  of  selection  in  this  instance 
was  a  very  simple  one  in  the  classification  of  per- 
sonnel. No  travelers  were  ever  more  genuinely 
homesick;  but  "that  there"  draft  had  them  in  its 
grip,  and,  needless  to  say,  as  an  institution  was  n«t 


A  BLUE  PRINT  ERA  6i 

the  object  of  any  sentimental  enthusiasm  on  their 
part.  In  common  with  other  men  assigned,  hun- 
dreds of  miles  in  the  rear,  to  the  same  kind  of  work 
they  did  at  home,  they  reahzed,  to  the  disgust  of 
their  martial  inclinations,  that  fighting  is  not  all 
there  is  to  making  war.  When  a  colored. regiment 
distinguished  itself,  this  was  some  satisfaction  to 
their  racial  pride  and  awakened  their  hope  that 
they  might  yet  have  a  chance  to  meet-  the 
Germans. 

More  and  more  of  our  outposts  were  scattered 
over  France.  And  they  were  only  outposts;  tiny 
dots  on  that  "  sheet  of  white  paper  "  connected  up 
by  the  flights  of  officers  in  automobiles  with  port- 
folios full  of  plans  and  additional  blue  prints.  The 
wild  stories  of  our  building  a  railroad  across  France 
at  the  rate  of  ten  miles  a  day  and  depots  arising 
as  by  magic  were  the  interpretation  of  our  dreams 
by  public  imagination,  which  drew  its  inspiration 
from  the  diabolical  energy  of  the  scouts  and  the 
projectors  who  were  trying  to  make  bricks  without 
straw  and  even  without  clay.  They  did  not  wait  on 
negotiations  through  headquarters,  but  acted  on  their 
own  initiative  in  seeking  material  from  the  French. 
A  reply  to  an  inquiry  that  there  was  no  material  was 
not  final  to  the  inquirer.  He  took  his  interpreter 
and  went  in  search  of  the  thing  he  wanted.  When 
he  found  it  and  sought  the  owner,  he  might  learn  that 
it  was  already  promised  or  needed  for  French  pur- 
poses; or,  if  for  sale,  that  it  was  second  hand  or 
third  hand  or  ready  for  the  junk  pile,  while  the 
price  demanded  was  in  keeping  with  the  limitations 
of  supply. 


62  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Americans  used  to  calling  up  a  lumber  yard,  a 
machine  shop,  or  an  employment  agency  on  the  tele- 
phone and  having  an  order  filled,  were  trying  to 
avoid  nervous  prostration  as  they  became  familiar- 
ized with  the  meaning  of  war  conditions.  Mean- 
while, they  wanted  to  report  progress  to  head- 
quarters which  was  considerate  unless  the  subject 
was  supplies  for  the  troops  in  training,  which  ever 
had  absolute  priority. 

Regular  officers  with  a  few  from  the  reserve 
corps,  who  had  been  sponsors  of  the  blue  prints 
and  the  placing  of  the  outposts,  were  reenforced 
by  every  steamer  from  the  States  with  personnel 
which  in  civil  life  had  built  bridges,  tunnels,  piers 
and  railways  and  organized  labor.  One  of  the 
directors  of  a  great  railroad  system  became  our 
railroad  general,  bringing  with  him  subordinates 
commissioned  on  a  day's  notice,  to  whom  their  uni- 
forms were  still  an  harassing  envelope  strapped  on 
their  persons  by  a  Sam  Browne  belt.  They  reached 
involuntarily  for  their  waistcoat  pockets  before  it 
occurred  to  them  to  look  at  their  wrist  watches  to 
see  what  was  the  time  of  day. 

If  they  were  middle-aged  men  and  settled  in  their 
habits,  French  customs  in  the  matter  of  light  break- 
fasts and  serving  the  meat  and  vegetables  in  sep- 
arate courses  were  an  additional  annoyance.  One 
reserve  Major,  who  had  been  used  to  putting  on  his 
shoes  before  his  trousers,  was  triumphant  one  morn- 
ing over  the  fact  that  he  was  at  last  accustomed  to 
breeches,  as  he  had  remembered  to  put  them  on  be- 
fore his  shoes. 

All  arrived  with  the  speed  of  a  limited  express, 


A  BLUE  PRINT  ERA  63 

only  to  have  the  brakes  put  on  by  the  shipping  situa- 
tion, which  stood  in  the  way  of  immediately  receiving 
from  home  a  requisition  for  "  a  thousand  miles  of 
telephone  wire,  water  supply  pumps,  tanks,  stand- 
pipes,  shop  facilities,  including  all  appliances  for 
repairing  and  rebuilding  locomotives  and  cars;  track 
and  bridge  tools  for  maintenance  purposes,  wreck- 
ing outfits,  pile  drivers,  track-laying  machinery,  oxy- 
acetylene  plants,  concrete-mixing  plants,  two-ton  and 
five-ton  locomotive  cranes,  portable  electric  light 
plants  "  and  a  few  other  things  which  would  make 
an  engineering  force  feel  comfortable  where  they 
had  such  a  job  as  the  blue  prints  called  for  to  per- 
form on  short  notice.  Such  demands  went  over  the 
cable  along  with  a  call  for  reserve  officers  for  man- 
aging laundries,  looking  after  repair  shops  for  boots 
and  shoes,  or  ten  thousand  lariat  straps  and  ten  thou- 
sand picket  pins,  thus  keeping  the  War  Department 
fully  occupied  with  troubles  of  its  own. 

Having  come  to  France  to  "  make  good "  as 
chosen  men  of  their  calling,  when  they  considered 
their  previous  standards  of  accomplishment  these 
experts  might  have  thrown  up  their  hands  in  dismay; 
but  that  was  un-American.  They  went  to  work  and 
talked  like  optimists  to  keep  themselves  cheerful,  or 
foregathered  around  the  blue  prints  and  discussed 
whether  or  not  we  had  secured  sufficient  space  for 
the  spur  tracks  required  back  of  the  piers  we  were 
to  build  as  soon  as  we  had  pile  drivers  and  piles, 
if  the  "  project "  were  expanded  to  three  million 
men.  One  railroad  man  said  that  you  did  not  have 
to  go  "  over  the  top  "  in  order  to  realize  the  truth 
of  Sherman's  saying  about  war.      He  had  enough 


64  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

idea  of  it  in  trying  to  assemble  a  locomotive  with  the 
help  of  four  German  prisoners,  a  French  interpreter 
and  a  second  lieutenant  who  was  said  to  be  a  good 
Latin  scholar  but  had  not  yet  become  "  classified 
personnel." 

Anyone  who  went  along  the  lines  of  communica- 
tion in  August  required  a  full  supply  of  the  American 
brand  of  Mulberry  Sellers  faith.  When  he  sought 
the  future  main  depot  of  supplies  and  a  quarter- 
master with  two  officer  assistants  and  one  clerk  in 
an  office  referred  the  inquirer  to  such  material  as 
he  would  find  in  the  little  building  across  from  the 
railway  station  as  all  there  was  to  show  at  present, 
he  understood  how  the  group  of  engineers  in  their 
tents  who  were  to  provide  acres  of  storage  ware- 
houses, might  not  feel  envious  of  the  progress  of 
other  portions  of  the  project. 

A  vast  field  and  a  few  tents  were  the  start  of  the 
great  aviation  school  which  was  to  become  a  small 
city  of  hangars  and  barracks.  We  had  then  finished 
our  first  piece  of  railroad  construction  in  France, 
a  stretch  of  seven  miles  from  a  French  railhead 
which  was  to  bring  material  for  building  the  school. 
A  hundred  miles  away  in  the  outskirts  of  a  city 
we  had  set  up  our  first  field  bakery,  which  was  bak- 
ing for  our  troops  the  only  white  bread  in  France. 
It  was  not  too  good  for  them.     Nothing  is. 

The  regular  officer  in  charge  rued  the  day  when 
he  had  taken  a  course  in  baking  to  increase  his  all- 
around  efficiency  as  an  officer,  for  it  destined  him  to 
be  chief  baker  in  France  as  long  as  his  bread  was 
good.  His  flour  came  from  the  distant  ports  where 
steamers  waited  their  turn  to  unload  for  want  of 
pier  space;  and  heterogeneous  piles  of  cargo  had  to 


A  BLUE  PRINT  ERA  65 

be  sorted  with  a  view  to  forwarding  the  things  for 
which  the  demand  seemed  the  most  vital. 

Each  isolated  part,  hardly  recognizable  as  having 
any  connection  with  the  other  parts  in  the  blue  print 
scheme,  was  making  some  sort  of  a  start,  but  halting 
to  yield  to  the  demands  of  others.  The  war  was 
not  one  of  blood  and  death,  but  of  men  working 
with  naked  hands  in  want  of  tools,  crying  for  ma- 
terial to  sources  of  supply  three  thousand  miles 
away.  Where  a  letter  of  requisition  from  British 
headquarters  reached  the  War  Office  by  mail  the 
same  day  or  the  day  after  it  was  written,  we  must 
count  on  ten  days  to  three  weeks'  postal  transit  or 
upon  the  cable,  which  garbled  technical  details. 
Where  in  England,  France  and  Germany  industries 
are  concentrated  in  small  national  areas  and  pressing 
orders  from  the  front  can  be  filled  promptly,  a  press- 
ing order  from  us  might  have  to  be  sent  from  Chi- 
cago or  Pittsburg  to  wait  upon  a  pier  for  the  next 
steamer,  when,  in  the  zealous  haste,  which  makes  for 
disorganization,  to  get  that  steamer  started  the  arti- 
cle might  be  overlooked  and  left  behind.  But  the 
time  was  summer.  Life  in  France  was  new  to  us  as  a 
compensation.  Worse  was  yet  to  come  with  winter. 
We  must  be  cheerful  and  keep  on  working.  The 
first  month's  experience  had  taught  even  those  of 
us  without  imagination  that  the  project  for  supplying 
the  army,  let  alone  preparing  it  for  battle,  was  an 
enterprise  surpassing  that  of  the  Panama  Canal  in 
magnitude  and  difficulty.  How  we  ever  accom- 
plished it  is  a  wonder  that  can  be  explained  only 
by  our  energy,  our  spirit  and  our  team  play  under  a 
driving  and  understanding  leadership,  inspired  by 
the  cause. 


VII 


MANY  PROBLEMS 

Problem  of  the  Sam  Browne  belt — Problem  of  our  uniform — Prob- 
lems as  to  driving  our  automobiles,  regulations  for  civilian 
visitors,  passports,  etc. — The  ambulance  drivers — Final  dis- 
position of  the  young  Americans  who  had  served  France  in 
her  ambulance  corps — Working  to  make  our  army  a  clean 
army — Outlining  the  field  for  the  Red  Cross,  the  Y.  M.  C.  A., 
the  Salvation  Army  and  the  K.  of  C. 

There  must  be  consideration  in  this  formative 
period  not  only  for  the  big  things,  but  for  the 
seemingly  little  things  which  would  have  far-reaching 
influence  in  precedents  and  customs  established  and 
policies  initiated.  It  is  easy  to  write  and  order  and 
easier  to  revoke  it  than  to  change  the  habit  of  con- 
duct which  its  provisions  have  inculcated  in  minds 
sensitive  to  first  impressions  in  the  early  days  of  an 
organization.  When  our  officers  appeared  in  the 
Sam  Browne  belt  it  meant  that  all  officers  coming  to 
Europe  would  have  to  wear  it,  which  represented, 
once  we  had  forty  or  fifty  thousand  officers  in  France, 
the  expenditure  of  a  great  deal  of  leather  when 
leather  was  scarce. 

Sam  Browne's  name  was  taken  in  vain  with  all 
the  ardor  of  a  strict  economist  by  those  who  were 
responsible  for  the  decision  in  favor  of  the  belt. 
I  think  that  the  British  army  officer  who  was  the 
originator  of  the  belt,  with  its  two  shoulder  straps 

66 


MANY  PROBLEMS  67 

and  supports  for  sword,  canteen,  glasses,  revolver 
and  other  equipment  in  order  to  keep  all  from 
bouncing  against  the  soft  region  below  the  ribs  on 
long  horseback  rides  in  colonial  campaigns  would 
have  been  astounded  himself  that  his  invention,  in 
a  war  in  which  officers  did  not  carry  swords,  should 
be  adopted  by  the  French  army  as  well  as  by  the 
British  as  a  substitute  for  the  sword  in  indicating 
to  soldiers  the  possession  of  the  commissioned  of- 
ficer's rank.  It  was  regulation  with  our  allies;  and 
we  made  it  regulation. 

Was  our  uniform  suitable  for  a  European  cam- 
paign? A  board  considered  the  subject.  Boards 
were  considering  many  subjects,  from  systems  of 
training  to  the  style  of  American  helmets.  Officers 
grew  weary  of  being  taken  away  from  their  regular 
duties  to  serve  on  boards,  which  sometimes  meant 
parliamentarism  when  action  was  important. 

Our  close-fitting  uniform,  with  its  plaster-tight 
ornamental  pockets,  which  made  a  fountain  pen  bulge 
out  as  if  it  were  inserted  under  the  skin,  and  its 
choke  collar  confounding  the  pulsations  of  the  ca- 
rotid, was  very  smart-looking  when  it  was  pressed, 
but  some  of  our  officers,  when  they  wanted  room 
for  a  notebook,  a  purse,  or  their  latest  memorandum 
of  requirements  for  beating  the  Germans  in  their 
branch,  envied  the  loose-fitting  British  blouse  with 
its  lapel  collar  and  pockets  ample  enough  to  carry 
a  sandwich  for  luncheon,  a  map  and  a  small  library 
of  notebooks. 

The  fact  that  thousands  of  officers  at  home  were 
already  fitted  with  the  choke  collar  and  were  learn- 
ing to  do  without  pockets  was  one  reason  for  not 


68  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

making  the  change.  Another  reason  was  a  desire 
to  retain  a  uniform  already  established  as  distinctly 
American. 

Should  an  officer  be  allowed  to  drive  his  car  or 
must  all  driving  be  done  by  chauffeurs,  as  in  the 
British  army?  What  color  were  our  cars  to  be 
painted?  What  regulations  were  to  govern  civilian 
visitors  to  our  zone  ?  What  uniform  were  the  Red 
Cross  and  Y.  M.  C.  A.  workers  to  wear?  What 
kind  of  identity  cards  were  officers  and  men  to  carry? 
Was  every  soldier  to  have  his  photograph  on  his 
card?  The  pass  problem  was  vital,  as  it  laid  upon 
us  a  responsibility  to  our  allies  in  safegtiarding 
military  secrets  against  espionage.  All  such  details 
must  be  considered  in  relation  to  the  systems  of  the 
British  and  the  French,  who  admitted  that  they 
might  make  many  changes  if  they  were  starting  the 
war  afresh. 

No  one  problem  was  dissociated  with  another. 
The  problem  of  control  touched  the  State  Depart- 
ment in  Washington,  which  had  charge  of  Issuing 
passports  to  Americans  who  wished  to  visit  France. 
It  was  decided  that  no  one  should  come  unless  he 
would  assist  In  some  way  in  winning  the  war,  which 
was  construed  to  exclude  the  wives  of  army  officers 
from  following  their  husbands.  A  privilege  granted 
to  one  wife  must  be  granted  to  all,  which  might  mean 
a  colony  of  several  thousand  wives  In  Paris  or  else- 
where in  the  rear  of  the  lines,  who  would  have  as 
much  opportunity  of  seeing  their  husbands  as  the 
orders  about  leave  would  permit.  Besides,  Mr. 
Hoover,  who  counted  the  populations  of  Europe  in 
daily  rations,  wanted  to  transport  food  for  no  one 


MANY  PROBLEMS  6g 

in  Europe  who  might  be  fed  at  home,  hopefully,  in 
part,  by  her  own  war  gardening.  Of  course  some 
enterprising  wife  was  found  to  enlist  as  a  worker  in 
the  Red  Cross.  The  husband  of  the  lady  who  made 
the  test  case  was  enlightened  by  the  information  that 
any  wife  who  succeeded  in  evading  the  regulation 
would  find  that  her  husband  had  been  ordered  home 
as  the  result  of  her  enterprise.  If  there  was  any  one 
thing  every  officer  in  France  did  not  want,  it  was  to 
be  ordered  home. 

What  of  the  volunteer  hospitals  and  the  ambu- 
lance associations  in  France?  Were  they  still  to 
continue  their  service  under  French  auspices  or  were 
they  to  be  absorbed  into  our  army?  Naturally,  their 
workers  wanted  to  serve  under  their  own  flag,  but 
they  had  an  affection  for  their  units  which  they 
would  have  liked  to  keep  intact.  Centralization  re- 
quired that  the  units  should  come  into  the  fold 
and  army  homogeneity  that  they  should  lose  their 
identity. 

The  ambulance  drivers  had  a  distinctive  uniform 
resembling  the  British;  their  work  had  been  widely 
exploited ;  the  Croix  de  Guerres  they  had  won  were 
the  tokens  of  their  heroism.  For  the  most  part  they 
were  young  college'  men.  Of  course,  the  letters  of 
recommendation  requisite  before  a  man's  services 
would  be  accepted  were  not  always  a  guarantee  that 
youth  bound  to  the  wars  would  bear  itself  with  the 
propriety  of  a  major  general  or  a  college  dean  when 
off  duty.  Some  drivers  had  rich  fathers  and  others 
were  dependent  upon  the  allowance  received  from 
the  associations.  Character  was  subject  to  the  usual 
human  variations  under  European  influences,  with 


70  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

some  false  judgments  formed  because  of  the  conduct 
of  a  few  when  they  were  on  leave  in  Paris.  If 
some  men  who  arrived  after  our  entry  into  the  war 
were  not  of  the  standard  previously  set,  this  was 
no  reflection  on  their  predecessors,  who  had  done  a 
noble  work  whether  called  by  adventure  or  solely  by 
a  desire  to  help  France. 

All  wanted  to  go  into  the  army  as  commissioned 
officers,  which  was  not  an  uncommon  desire  among 
the  youth  of  America  at  this  time.  Before  the  asso- 
ciations were  taken  over,  those  whose  period  of  en- 
listment was  up  appeared  in  numbers  at  headquarters 
with  the  wistfulness  of  youth  thrilled  by  the  sight  of 
the  flag  at  the  entrance.  There  they  met  the  dis- 
illusioning question,  "  Have  you  had  any  regular  mili- 
tary training?"  which  made  one  sympathetic  with 
their  disappointment,  as  they  spoke  a  faltering  "  No, 
sir." 

Instruction  in  ambulance  driving  did  not  include 
familiarity  with  the  orders  necessary  to  take  a 
platoon  of  infantry  out  of  its  billets,  march  it  to  a 
field  and  put  it  through  a  morning's  drill.  That  was 
only  a  part  of  the  requirements,  they  found,  if  you 
were  to  pass  the  examinations  to  become  an  officer, 
unless  you  could  qualify  as  a  specialist  in  languages 
or  in  some  other  technical  branch  which  would  make 
you  useful  enough  on  the  Staff  to  be  made  an  ex- 
ception to  the  rule. 

A  few  entered  the  army  through  this  back  en- 
trance; others  went  to  the  artillery  school  at  Fon- 
tainebleau  as  student  officers;  others  continued  to 
drive;  others  enlisted  as  privates,  hoping  to  win  the 
coveted  bars  from  the  ranks;  and  others  returned 


MANY  PROBLEMS  71 

home  to  try  for  later  officers'  training  camps.  It 
was  a  sad  anomaly  that  most  of  them  would  have 
fared  better  in  their  ambitions  to  serve  in  our  army 
if  they  had  remained  at  home  instead  of  making 
their  Odyssey  abroad,  where  their  gallant  service  was 
one  of  the  factors  of  material  expression  of  our  sym- 
pathy with  the  Allies  in  the  days  when  we  were  offi- 
cially neutral. 

The  time  came  when  a  youth  appearing  in  the 
streets  of  Paris  in  the  old  ambulancier's  uniform 
was  accosted  by  a  military  policeman  and  told  to 
report  to  the  Provost  Marshal's  office,  where  he 
learned  that  if  he  were  not  going  into  the  army  or 
had  not  found  other  occupation  he  must  return  to  the 
States.  Thus,  the  uniform  familiar  to  Parisians  for 
two  years  disappeared  from  the  streets;  and  the 
associations'  reputation  for  the  work  they  had  done 
was  not  subject  to  any  reflection  due  to  unrepre- 
sentative idlers. 

There  was  hardship  for  some  individuals;  but  the 
mills  of  democracy,  organizing  against  the  Prussian 
system  under  the  directing  hand  of  soldiers,  must 
work  hardship  on  many  individuals.  The  regular 
army  was  in  charge;  and  being  regular  it  liked 
things  regularized.  Definite  lines  had  to  be  drawn, 
cut  where  they  would.  Either  an  American  in 
France  was  to  be  in  uniform  or  he  was  not.  If  he 
were,  then  he  was  subject  to  army  discipline. 

We  were  setting  up  a  military  kingdom  in  France 
for  military  purposes  which  must  be  responsible  for 
all  the  details  which  make  for  efficiency  and  good 
conduct.  These  include  morals;  and  the  morals  of 
youth  who  came  to  France  were  in  the  keeping  of 


72  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  army,  in  the  fullness  of  the  authority  which  it 
had  received  from  the  people.  An  immoral  army 
is  not  a  good  army  these  days,  which  permits,  in 
this  connection,  reference  to  that  scourge  of  armies 
which  afflicted  oversea  troops  in  the  early  days  of 
the  war. 

A  division  surgeon's  talk  to  a  gathering  of  our 
soldiers  embodied  the  sound  military  ethics  on  the 
subject  which  were  to  be  applied.  He  told  them 
that  it  was  their  duty  to  the  country  as  men,  to  their 
comrades  and  to  society  to  live  cleanly,  but  if  they 
lacked  self-control,  precautions  must  be  rigidly  en- 
forced to  protect  others  from  contamination,  to  the 
end  that  the  man  whom  his  country  had  trained  and 
sent  abroad  should  not  be  in  hospital  as  the  result 
of  his  transgressions,  while  others  who  had  not  trans- 
gressed fought  his  battles  for  him. 

Paris  of  the  boulevards  we  know  is  not  the  real 
Paris,  which  goes  about  its  day's  work  sanely  and 
normally;  but  to  the  imagination  of  some  youth 
Paris  is  found  to  be  the  boulevards.  What  officer 
or  man  did  not  look  forward  to  seeing  Paris  before 
his  return?  The  very  word  has  exercised  a  spell 
over  the  world  for  centuries.  Who  was  not  disap- 
pointed that  his  route  of  travel  from  port  to  training 
camp  did  not  pass  through  Paris?  Who  did  not 
want  to  spend  his  leave  there? 

Again,  the  stern  direction  that  was  aiming  to 
mold  a  force  for  a  stern  business  interfered  with 
desire.  Neither  officer  nor  man  was  to  go  to  Paris, 
except  on  duty.  When  we  had  won  battles  the  re- 
strictions might  be  relaxed.  For  the  moment  the 
business  in  hand  was  to  prepare  to  win  battles.    The 


MANY  PROBLEMS  73 

Puritan  strain  which  unconsciously  predominates  in 
us  came  out  strongly  in  France  as  well  as  at  home, 
where  the  number  of  prohibition  States  was  increas- 
ing and  we  were  considering  the  abolition  of  the 
manufacture  of  all  spirituous  liquor  and  an  officer 
might  not  have  a  cocktail  in  his  own  club,  while  the 
French  continued  to  drink  wine  temperately  with 
their  meals  and  the  English  to  take  their  ale  ac- 
cording to  the  habit  of  generations.  It  was  clear 
that  General  Pershing  meant  to  have  a  moral  army 
according  to  our  strictest  moral  notions,  and  the  prin- 
ciples established  at  the  outset  were  not  only  to  be 
an  Increasing  element  of  our  military  strength,  but 
also  such  as  to  react  upon  our  citizenship  after  the 
war. 

A  prescribed  military  regime  may  produce  a 
healthy  body  without  producing  a  healthy  mind  or 
developing  that  spirit  requisite  to  determined  and 
skillful  action.  While  the  Englishman  fighting  across 
the  Channel  from  his  hedgerows  and  the  French- 
man fighting  on  his  soil  spent  their  leaves  with  their 
families,  how  were  we  to  provide  our  men  with  a 
substitute  for  the  influences  of  home?  How  enter- 
tain them?  How  give  them  ethical  direction?  How 
supplement  the  work  of  the  Army  Medical  Corps  in 
caring  for  the  sick  and  wounded? 

All  America  which  was  not  of  draft  age  had  put 
one  hand  on  its  purse  and  held  up  its  other  in  its 
offers  to  help.  Only  say  the  word  and  we  might 
have  a  dozen  volunteer  welfare  workers  for  every 
soldier,  which,  incidentally,  would  be  one  way  for 
the  worker  to  reach  France.  The  same  policy  of 
centralization  which  absorbed  the  ambulance  asso- 


74  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ciations,  acting  in  harmony  with  that  of  the  War 
Department,  turned  to  the  Red  Cross  and  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.,  the  Knights  of  Columbus  and  the  Salvation 
Army  which  were  to  be  materialized  as  auxiliaries 
with  a  monopoly  of  welfare  work,  to  avoid  the  con- 
fusion of  overlapping  humanitarian  efforts  without 
supervision  when  Mrs.  Jones  is  allowed  to  have  her 
own  hospital  unit,  Mr,  Smith  his  own  ambulance 
section  or  recreation  hut  and  Mr.  Robinson  his  own 
lecture  course,  with  all  other  volunteers  claiming  the 
free  field  of  equal  privilege  for  their  activities. 

Broadly,  the  division  of  functions  was  that  the 
Red  Cross  looked  after  the  sick  and  the  wounded 
and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  the  Knights  of  Columbus 
looked  after  entertainment  and  lectures  and  supple- 
mented army  supplies  by  their  sales  booths  in  their 
"  huts,"  while  the  Salvation  Army  did  personal 
work  of  the  character  with  which  it  is  associated. 
All  workers  were  required  to  be  in  uniform;  all  must 
have  army  passes;  all  were  subject  to  the  discipline 
of  their  organization  under  army  direction.  Each 
organization  might  take  a  map  of  France,  lay  out 
its  programme  and  send  out  its  own  outposts  of 
initial  organization  in  keeping  with  army  plans. 
Each  had  problems  of  its  own  as  acute  in  their  way 
as  the  army's. 

If  you  asked  in  August,  1917,  about  the  size  of 
our  force  in  France,  your  information  was  subject 
to  the  qualification  of  "  inclusive  or  exclusive  of  the 
Red  Cross  and  Y.  M.  C.  A.  personnel  and  news- 
paper correspondents."  Every  ship  brought  its 
quota  of  workers,  of  commissions  to  study  the  situa- 
tion and  lecturers  who  were  to  appeal  for  funds 


MANY  PROBLEMS  75 

when  they  returned.  Anyone  who  had  authority  to 
go  abroad  in  19 17  was  a  marked  man  in  his  com- 
munity. He  had  a  chance  "  to  do  something  "  and 
if  you  were  not  "  doing  something  "  you  put  your- 
self under  your  own  personal  suspicion  of  being  a 
slacker. 

The  shadow  of  tonnage  lay  across  the  desks  of 
the  chiefs  of  the  Red  Cross  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
as  dark  as  across  the  C.-in-C.'s.  Any  arriving  volun- 
teer who  had  brought  with  him  a  shipload  of  sup- 
plies would  have  been  as  welcome  as  a  relief  party 
to  stranded  polar  explorers.  Each  had  ideas  about 
what  should  be  done  for  our  "  boys " ;  America 
teemed  with  ideas.  A  dozen  millionaires  in  the 
lobby  of  the  Red  Cross  Building  found  that  their 
money  would  not  buy  motor  cars  or  trucks  when 
none  was  for  sale.  Their  helplessness,  in  view  of 
their  power  at  home,  was  a  trifle  diverting  to  some 
of  us  who  were  poor.  Mostly  they  were  eager  and 
serious,  but  some  wanted  only  a  trip  to  the  front 
and  to  look  around  before  returning  home;  for  war 
does  not  recast  human  nature. 

The  Red  Cross,  though  it  had  no  American 
wounded  to  look  after,  did  not  want  for  a  field 
where  its  workers  and  its  funds  could  afford  practi- 
cal aid  in  the  humbler  quarters  of  Paris  or  of  other 
towns  stricken  by  three  years  of  war.  While  our 
army  was  as  yet  delivering  no  blows,  they  could 
help  strengthen  the  morale  of  the  French  people  to 
bear  the  strain  of  another  winter.  The  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
had  its  mission  set  in  establishing  huts  at  the  scat- 
tered camps,  where  the  soldiers  might  write  letters, 
buy  French  chocolate  and  French  cigarettes  when 


76  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

American  chewing-gum  and  cigarettes  were  wanting, 
hear  the  phonograph  play  its  latest  airs,  and  enjoy 
a  debauch  of  the  movies,  or  listen  to  serious  talks 
by  well-known  speakers. 

How  were  the  projectors  of  a  great  hut  system 
to  secure  labor  and  material  for  building  their  huts 
when  the  army  was  struggling  to  get  barracks  built? 
They  had  to  go  out  and  "  rustle  "  in  the  hope  of 
getting  something  from  the  French  which  the  army 
did  not  need  or  had  overlooked.  The  building  of 
one  hut  in  the  summer  of  19 17  was  a  greater  accom- 
plishment than  the  building  of  a  score  in  the  summer 
of  19 1 8.  Association  chiefs  at  home,  in  view  of 
the  speed  with  which  the  American  training  camps 
arose,  might  have  thought  that  everybody  who  went 
to  France  was  suddenly  struck  with  sleeping  sick- 
ness, judging  by  the  slow  progress  made,  had  it  not 
been  for  the  numerous  commissioners  who  returned 
home  with  reports  about  the  obstacles  European  rep- 
resentatives had  to  overcome. 


VIII 

BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION 


The  new  headquarters  in  the  field — Hard  work  in  crowded  offices 
— The  professional  soldier's  hours  of  duty — ^A  hive  with  very 
few  drones — Forming  a  General  Staff — The  German  General 
Staff — Pershing  says  we  must  have  a  General  Staff — Weeding 
out  officers  with  routine  minds — Organizing  the  Staff  as  spe- 
cialists— Our  opportunities  for  forming  a  General  Staff  as 
contrasted  with  the  British — ^Promotions  and  new  officers — 
Reserve  officers. 


Everybody  concerned  was  delighted  at  the  thought 
of  being  nearer  the  troops  and  quit  of  Rue  Con- 
stantine,  which  had  been  unreal  as  a  headquarters, 
when  early  in  September  we  moved  to  Lorraine. 
The  phrase  "  Headquarters  in  the  Field,"  as  every- 
body knows,  had  ceased  to  apply  on  the  Western 
front,  with  its  stationary  warfare,  where  com- 
manders settled  down  in  chateaux  to  a  regular  rou- 
tine of  existence  and  planted  their  gardens  in  the 
spring.  Sir  Douglas  Haig  has  been  in  the  same 
town  for  three  years.  Marshal  Joffre  was  at  Chan- 
tilly  for  two  years. 

General  Pershing,  with  only  one  division  as  yet 
in  his  command,  might  not  count  on  any  offensive 
which  would  require  him  to  paclc  up  and  mov^e  at 
an  early  moment  once  he  had  left  Paris  and  estab- 
lished himself  with  his  army.  He  wanted  to  be  at 
a  point  where  his  commanders  could  see  him  and 

77 


78  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

he  could  see  the  things  most  essential  for  his  per- 
sonal supervision  with  the  least  possible  travel. 
Requisite  office  space  and  living  space  for  the  per- 
sonnel of  the  growing  central  organization  were 
available  in  the  hotels  of  a  famous  summer  resort; 
but  because  of  their  geographic  location  they  had  to 
yield  to  the  more  advantageous  one  of  a  town  in  the 
neighborhood  of  the  training  area  and  at  the  hub 
of  a  half-wheel  of  the  southern  part  of  the  trench 
lines,  about  equidistant  from  a  possible  American 
sector  anywhere  from  Alsace  to  Champagne,  in  the 
days  before  unity  of  command,  resulting  from  the 
German  offensive  of  March,  191 8,  scattered  our 
divisions  from  Alsace  to  the  North  Sea. 

As  the  French  staff  offices  reflect,  along  with  a 
military  atmosphere,  an  atmosphere  of  Paris  busi- 
ness offices  and  the  British  one  of  London  business 
offices,  so  ours  were  to  reflect  that  of  an  office  build- 
ing in  New  York  or  Chicago.  In  no  detail  more 
noticeably  than  in  this  did  our  national  characteristics 
express  themselves  in  the  application  to  our  needs  of 
our  observation  of  Allied  methods.  Where  a  French 
or  a  British  Staff  might  scatter  in  different  buildings, 
our  fondness  for  concentration  led  us,  through  the 
influence  of  natural  inclinations,  to  choose  a  group 
of  old  French  barracks  buildings  as  our  offices,  to 
the  edification  of  our  allies,  who  were  ever  curious 
about  each  revelation  of  American  thoughts  and 
habits. 

We  like  new  things,  we  like  brightness  and  we 
like  change.  To  scour  the  venerable  floors  with 
steel  filings,  to  whitewash  and  scrub,  to  set  desks 
where  the  soldiers  had  had  their  bunks,  to  cut  doors 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION      79 

through  old  partitions  and  build  new  ones,  to  put  in 
sanitary  plumbing  and  to  start  typewriters  in  their 
medley  of  orders,  requisitions  and  memoranda  were 
all  in  keeping  with  our  national  propensities,  not  to 
mention  that  the  alterations  were  serving  notice,  in 
common  with  all  our  plans,  that  we  were  getting 
ready  for  a  long  war.  That  headquarters  was  as 
American  as  Private  John  Smith,  of  Nebraska,  in 
his  campaign  hat  and  his  broad-toed  shoes;  as  Amer- 
ican as  our  tendency  to  tear  down  an  old  apartment 
house  in  order  to  build  one  with  the  latest  improve- 
ments. Any  corporation  head  at  home  would  have 
approved  the  arrangements  as  being  thoroughly 
businesslike,  with  the  General's  own  office  in  the  cen- 
tral room  of  the  central  building,  his  Chief  of  Staff 
across  the  hall  and  his  principal  subordinates  all 
within  easy  summons. 

Who  that  has  lived  and  worked  at  headquarters 
will  ever  forget  that  barracks  square  where  the 
automobiles  came  and  went,  where  the  headquarters 
detachment  drilled  or  batted  up  flies  over  the  clean- 
swept  space  in  the  late  afternoon;  or  the  French 
and  American  flags  at  the  entrance,  or  the  sentry 
at  the  General's  house  down  the  street,  who  did  not 
want  for  exercise  when  he  had  to  salute  each  pass- 
ing member  of  the  increasing  commissioned  per- 
sonnel ? 

Those  who  served  there  in  later  days,  when  an 
American  telephone  girl  would  either  give  you  any 
office  in  ten  seconds  or  tell  you  that  the  wire  was 
busy,  or  put  you  on  long  distance  to  Paris  or  a 
division  headquarters  or  a  port  clear  across  France, 
and  when  the  Signal  Corps  operators  clicked  off  their 


8o  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

telegrams  with  the  speed  of  night  press  messages — 
well,  they  little  know  the  troubles  of  the  pioneers 
who  fought  battles  over  that  overtaxed  French  tele- 
phone and  telegraph  system  without  supplies.  With 
everyone  too  busy  to  think  of  the  troubles  of  others, 
those  same  pioneers  did  not  quite  realize  the  task 
that  the  quartermaster  had  in  preparing  the  barracks 
for  the  reception  of  the  Staff  which  was  to  leave 
Paris  one  day  and  be  at  work  in  headquarters  the 
next. 

The  Staff  had  ordered  what  it  needed.  But  who 
was  the  quartermaster  to  order  it  from  in  turn? 
Generals  and  chiefs  of  sections,  once  they  knew  the 
location,  sent  on  their  own  scouts  to  look  for  houses, 
not  to  mention  cooks.  Alas !  every  general  might 
not  get  the  best  house  in  town  after  the  C.-in-C.'s. 
All  officers  must  have  billets  and  all  field  clerks  must 
be  provided  for,  and  regulations  covering  all  contin- 
gencies must  be  established. 

If  a  desk  were  not  forthcoming  for  your  office, 
then  get  a  table.  You  must  have  something  besides 
your  knee  to  work  on  when  you  were  dealing  with 
your  little  portion  of  that  project  for  an  army  of 
a  million  or  two  or  three  million  men;  and  when 
any  minute  the  General  might  call  on  you  for  a  re- 
port on  progress,  surprise  you  by  what  he  knew  about 
what  you  were  doing,  perhaps  surprise  you  in  some 
other  respects  and  perhaps  send  you  out  of  the 
room  with  a  word  and  a  smile  that  made  you  think 
you  were  serving  your  country  well.  Attach  a 
printed  card  with  your  name  to  your  desk  or  table 
in  order  that  he  who  hurried  through  the  halls  might 
read  and  then  try  to  use  your  influence  to  share 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION       8i 

another  officer's  stenographer  if  you  had  not  one  of 
your  own. 

Work  was  the  gospel  of  Headquarters.  Every 
morning  as  early  as  eight  o'clock  the  movement  of 
officers  and  clerks  began  along  the  road  to  the 
offices.  An  hour  for  luncheon;  an  hour  and  a  half 
for  dinner,  and  then  back  to  the  grind  after  dinner, 
sometimes  until  midnight!  Each  branch  had  its 
own  mess,  with  a  mess  president  engaged  in  im- 
parting secrets  of  American  cuisine  to  a  French  cook. 
All  the  talk  was  shop ;  openly,  irresistibly,  shop.  In 
one  mess,  artillery  was  going  to  win  the  war;  in  an- 
others,  it  was  the  engineers;  in  another,  aviation;  and 
in  another,  the  Medical  Corps  or  the  Adjutant  Gen- 
eral's department.  Officers  who  at  army  posts  may 
have  had  only  four  or  six  hours  a  day  duty,  such 
was  the  enthusiasm  of  meeting  their  new  responsi- 
bilities, could  now  hardly  detach  themselves  from 
the  treadmill  when  the  C.-in-C.  gave  orders  that 
everyone  must  have  two  hours'  exercise  a  day. 

It  is  for  war  that  the  professional  soldier  trains. 
War  had  come;  great  war.  It  was  his  hour  of  op- 
portunity; for  service,  for  distinction,  for  promotion. 
The  eagerness  of  the  runner  at  the  starting-post 
possessed  him  if  he  were  young.  A  visitor  who  had 
an  inclination  to  gossip  as  he  approached  a  desk, 
received  a  handshake  and  a  greeting,  a  moment's 
attention  to  see  if  he  had  any  business,  and  if  he 
had  not,  the  hand  that  gave  the  shake  took  up  a 
paper  from  the  "  Incoming  "  basket.  Thus,  a  phi- 
landerer who  was  slow  of  appreciation  might  be 
dispatched  from  one  desk  to  another  until  he  had 
touched  base  at  every  desk  in  Headquarters  without 


82  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ever  having  a  chance  to  discuss  the  war  situation 
because  everybody  was  too  busy  to  think  of  the 
Kaiser's  or  President  Wilson's  job  or  anybody's  job 
except  his  own.  When  the  first  news  of  the  Italian 
disaster  was  told  to  one  officer,  he  merely  looked 
up  from  his  laden  desk  to  exclaim :  "  That  means 
we  have  all  the  more  to  do  to  win  this  war !  " 

There  was  waste  motion,  of  course,  and  perhaps 
some  men  went  through  the  pantomime  of  being 
busy  in  order  to  keep  in  fashion.  Indeed,  unless 
you  had  papers  on  your  desk  and  wrote  reports  and 
orders  you  were  under  suspicion  of  being  a  drone 
in  the  hive.  It  required  shrewd  oversight  to  find 
out  who  was  "  getting  something  done  "  and  who 
was  just  "  doing  something,"  which  was  one  of  the 
duties  the  C.-in-C.  especially  took  unto  himself.  The 
question  asked  about  every  officer  of  senior  rank 
was,  "Is  he  an  organizer?"  Each  thought  that 
he  was,  whether  he  was  or  not,  and  there  were 
certainly  others  who  thought  that  he  was  not — a 
statement  that  must  sound  as  familiar  in  the  War 
Department  as  at  G.  H.  Q.  in  France. 

The  purpose  of  all  this  effort,  aside  from  getting 
on  with  the  business  in  hand,  was  to  create  a  Gen- 
eral Staff  on  European  lines  adaptable  to  our  needs 
in  France,  which  included  at  the  same  time  the  search 
for  who  was  capable  of  appreciating  the  character 
of  a  General  Staff  as  a  first  requirement  for  assist- 
ing in  its  creation.  All  men  with  any  military  under- 
standing had  agreed  in  theory  that  we  ought  to 
have  a  Staff.  We  had  started  the  nucleus  of  one 
after  the  Spanish  War  and  it  had  remained  a  nucleus 
which  was  consulted,  but  little  considered.     Some 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION       83 

strong  personality,  sometimes  an  adjutant  general 
rather  than  the  Chief  of  Staff,  became  predominant 
as  we  know;  while  the  different  departments  were 
inclined  to  be  compartmental  in  the  administration 
routine  of  our  small  army. 

The  significance  of  the  continually  heralded  fact 
that  the  German  General  Staff  through  its  organ- 
ization had  been  the  driving  and  guiding  force  of 
German  military  success  had  not  been  altogether 
understood  by  our  public.  A  woman  who  associated 
it  very  properly  with  something  sinister  and  wicked, 
that  favored  atrocities  and  ruthlessness,  said  to  me, 
"  They  say  we  ought  to  have  a  Staff.  Hasn't  that 
German  Staff  caused  all  the  trouble?"  It  would 
have  caused  the  Allies  infinitely  more  trouble  if  there 
had  not  been  a  skillful  French  Staff  which  could 
hold  its  own  against  the  German  Staff. 

To  the  soldier  in  the  trenches  a  Staff  is  often  the 
symbol  of  some  secret  and  distant  power,  responsible 
for  all  plans  and  orders,  of  which  he  is  the  pawn. 
If  he  wants  supplies,  if  his  attack  fails,  subordinates 
say  that  it  is  due  to  bad  "  Staff  work,"  which  fixes 
the  responsibility  in  current  phrase  while  it  proves 
the  importance  of  an  efficient  General  Staff. 

Every  Staff  makes  mistakes.  The  number  of  its 
mistakes  is  reckoned  in  the  lives  of  soldiers.  Its 
blunders  mean  piles  of  dead,  with  no  object  gained. 
The  tribute  which  every  professional  soldier  pays  to 
the  German  General  Staff  is  born  of  the  admiration 
which  aspires  to  have  an  organization  as  capable 
as  that  in  fighting  for  our  principles  in  the  chess 
play  against  the  enemy  and  his  principles,  when  the 
question  of  which  set  of  principles  shall  survive  must 


S4  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

be  settled  by  violence.  It  is  the  complex  organiza- 
tion of  the  Staff  which  keeps  touch  with  the  location 
of  the  enemy's  units  or  his  battle  order,  thus  fore- 
seeing his  plans;  which  takes  from  him  his  latest 
development  in  tactics  for  prompt  application  to  your 
own  ends;  which  lays  out  the  plans  of  attack;  which 
strives  to  be  ahead  of  him  in  improvements  in  arms 
or  in  methods;  which  coordinates  all  branches,  all 
parts  as  well  as  morale  and  purpose,  into  a  homo- 
geneous force  which  shall  gain  by  the  skill  of  organ- 
ization the  greatest  result  at  the  least  cost  in  life. 
Its  tentacles  reach  into  the  enemy's  country;  into 
the  psychology  of  his  troops  no  less  than  of  your 
own.  It  should  be  argus-eyed  and  multiple-fingered. 
All  studies  in  efficiency,  all  measures  for  saving  time 
and  lowering  working  costs  and  for  increasing  out- 
put by  concentration  and  labor-saving  devices  are 
the  business  counterparts  of  the  functions  of  a  Gen- 
eral Staff. 

A  good  Staff  tries  to  buy  in  the  cheapest  and  sell 
in  the  dearest  market;  and  the  coin  of  the  market 
is  casualties.  If  it  yields  ground  it  aims  to  make 
the  enemy  pay  heavily  for  his  success;  if  it  attacks, 
it  aims  to  pay  as  little  as  possible  for  its  gains,  think- 
ing always  in  the  terms  of  the  transaction  as  a  whole 
in  much  the  same  way  that  a  department  store  which 
cuts  prices  in  a  drive  on  one  article  as  an  incentive 
to  profitable  sales  in  another.  Russia  was  Ger- 
many's cheapest  market.  Probably  she  got  four  or 
five  Russians  for  every  German  soldier  she  ex- 
pended. 

Both  the  French  and  German  Staffs  before  the 
war  held  to  the  opinion  that  a  competent  Staff  could 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION       85 

not  be  created  during  a  war.  It  must  be  the  product 
of  years  of  training  in  time  of  peace,  which  accumu- 
lated a  body  of  experts  who  would  have  such  a 
start  over  any  group  of  beginners  as  would  enable 
them  to  keep  the  lead.  The  British,  who  had  a 
nucleus,  had  to  create  a  system  for  directing  a  big 
army  and  they  did  it,  though  the  task  was  costly. 
We  also  must  create  a  Staff — must  is  a  strong  per- 
suader when  General  Pershing  speaks  the  word. 
He  had  been  on  our  General  Staff  in  Washington  in 
its  early  days  and  appreciated  the  value  of  a  Staff. 

As  the  authority  was  his  to  build  an  organization 
to  suit  his  purposes,  those  old  barracks  buildings 
were  to  witness  a  development  which  would  have 
been  startling  to  some  retired  generals  had  they 
viewed  it  in  a  club  corner  in  Washington.  No  one 
wanted  to  follow  the  model  of  the  German  Staff 
system  in  its  diabolical  tendencies  and  secret  proc- 
esses for  gratifying  a  lust  of  power,  which  had 
allowed  the  order  of  one  man  to  plunge  the  world 
into  the  vortex  of  hell;  but  we  did  want  an  organ- 
ization which  should  make  the  most  of  the  brains 
and  the  spirit  in  us  for  battle  action,  to  prevent  free 
men  of  our  flesh  and  blood  and  traditions  from  being 
needlessly  sacrificed  by  the  superior  technique  of  the 
enemy,  using  servile  men  as  its  pawns. 

Our  army  organization  at  home  had  administered 
posts  and  territorial  divisions.  It  had  little  reason 
for  considering  any  force  larger  than  a  battalion  as 
a  mobile  body  which  required  tactical  direction  in  the 
presence  of  an  enemy.  This  kind  of  administration 
developed  routine  minds.  Step  by  step,  promotions 
brought  the  seniors  in  rank  to  the  top  to  sign  the 


86  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

orders  of  routine.  Younger  men  had  worn- out  their 
enterprise  by  the  time  they  had  brigadiers'  stars  on 
their  shoulders. 

With  only  six  thousand  officers  in  our  regular 
army,  each  having  a  number  which  advanced  every 
time  a  higher  number  on  the  list  was  retired,  if  the 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  our  youth  were  not  to  be 
led  to  sacrifice  in  the  field,  if  we  were  to  learn  the 
first  principles  of  the  technique  of  buying  in  the 
cheapest  market  and  selling  in  the  dearest,  we  must 
make  use  of  those  officers,  whatever  their  place  on 
the  list,  who  had  been  marked  among  their  fellows 
for  exceptional  ability  or  at  least  for  exceptional 
energy.  It  was  not  a  time  for  considering  the  sus- 
ceptibilities of  Major  General  X  or  Brigadier  Gen- 
eral Z,  though  their  hairs  were  white  and  their 
careers  spotless.  Yet  they  were  there.  They  had 
the  rank  and  they  would  not  have  been  human  if 
they  had  not  been  tenacious  in  the  hour  of  oppor- 
tunity of  the  rights  of  seniority,  which  had  been  the 
goal  of  ambition  gained,  under  the  old  regime,  only 
by  the  long  service  to  their  credit.  As  Roman 
veterans  pointed  to  their  wounds  in  the  Forum,  so 
our  elder  officers  would  state  the  number  of  years 
they  had  been  in  the  army. 

To  put  it  simply:  One  section  of  the  new  Staff 
looked  after  transport;  another,  supplies;  another, 
information;  another  trained  the  soldier  and  an- 
other directed  him  in  battle.  Or,  to  put  it  more 
elaborately,  one  group  of  experts  had  charge  of 
bringing  troops  and  supplies  overseas  and  of  regu- 
lating tonnage  and  tonnage  replacements;  another, 
of  supplying  the  army  with  all  its  requirements,  from 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION       87 

wagons  to  motors,  with  all  that  the  soldier  eats  and 
wears  and  all  the  weapons  he  uses  in  battle  and  the 
bandages  for  his  wounds;  another,  of  the  training 
of  the  soldiers  and  the  officers  in  the  field  and  in 
all  the  schools  of  specialism,  being  responsible  for 
coordinating  all  the  processes  to  the  desired  end  of 
maximum  efficiency  of  man-power  and  material. 
Another  group  kept  a  check  on  all  possible  sources 
of  enemy  espionage,  supplied  the  maps  required  by 
our  forces,  kept  informed  of  the  enemy's  disposi- 
tions and  his  morale,  sought  out  his  secrets  and 
analyzed  all  sources  of  information  into  minute  re- 
ports for  still  another  group  which  were  experts 
in  the  handling  of  troops,  responsible  for  troop 
movements  and  dispositions,  for  all  strictly  military 
operations  and  all  tactical  arrangements  and  all 
strategic  plans  for  battle.  The  Sections  were  known 
as  G-i,  G-2,  G-3,  G-4  and  G-5,  and  taken  altogether 
as  the  "  G's." 

There  was  nothing  new  in  the  general  outline  of 
this  system.  Founded  upon  the  experience  of  all 
great  armies,  it  was  something  as  proven  by  test 
as  the  system  of  president,  vice-president,  board  of 
directors  and  general  manager  for  a  corporation. 
Accomplishment,  as  in  everything  else  in  this  world, 
resolved  itself  back  to  the  men  who  had  the  work 
to  do.  Because  a  man  was  young,  ambitious  and 
energetic  did  not  mean  that  he  was  fit  for  responsi- 
bility. His  seniors  might  be  his  superiors  in  judg- 
ment and  energy.  The  Staff  system  was  right  but 
it  would  fail  If  personnel  failed. 

Each  group  had  its  representatives  In  the  corps 
and  divisions  in  touch  with  the  chief  of  staff  of 


88  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

section,  as  the  head  of  each  group  was  called,  who 
must  be  a  trained  soldier  in  directing  toward  mili- 
tary ends  the  efforts  of  the  great  railroad  builder, 
lawyer,  surgeon,  engineer,  chemist  or  contractor 
from  civil  life.  Every  mile  of  track  laid,  every  pier 
built,  every  warehouse  constructed  and  its  location, 
every  blow  of  a  hammer  must  fit  into  the  general 
plan. 

The  chiefs  of  the  G's  met  at  ten  o'clock  in  the 
morning  with  the  chief  of  the  General  Staff  in  his 
office,  where  they  made  their  reports,  conferred  and 
received  instructions;  and  later  they  held  meetings 
of  the  subordinates  of  their  own  sections.  Through 
the  Chief  of  Staff  and  through  the  Commander-in- 
Chief,  this  "  brain  trust,"  as  the  line  called  it,  had 
its  policies  executed  when  they  were  approved;  and 
they  might  be  colonels,  while  the  Surgeon  General, 
the  Quartermaster  General,  or  the  Chief  of  Ord- 
nance responsible  for  administration  were  brigadier 
generals. 

A  black  stripe  around  the  sleeve  and  a  star  on 
the  collar  were  the  insignia  of  this  inner  cabinet  of 
suggestive  and  creative  authority,  which  the  line  re- 
garded with  something  of  the  feelings  that  a  mining 
engineer  in  a  distant  camp  in  Mexico  has  for  the 
New  York  office  contingent. 

"  When  I  go  up  to  the  front  I  put  my  arms  behind 
me  so  they  won't  see  my  black  stripes,"  said  one  Staff 
officer,  "  but  when  I'm  around  Headquarters  I  hold 
them  up  for  everybody  to  see." 

If  a  Staff  officer  appears  in  the  trenches,  the  occu- 
pants, who  are  the  objects  of  his  organization,  do 
not  mind  a  little  extra  artillery  fire  for  his  edifica- 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION       89 

tion.  Though  a  Staff  position  might  be  considered 
a  "  cushy  job  "  by  the  unknowing,  it  was  not  sought; 
or,  if  it  were,  the  seeker  was  usually  unfitted  for  it. 
The  ambition  of  each  chief  of  section  was  to  get 
command  of  a  regiment  or  a  brigade,  or,  at  least, 
to  see  battle  service  of  some  kind;  and  General 
Pershing  proposed  that  this  ambition  should  be 
gratified. 

Regardless  of  the  practice  of  other  European 
staffs,  which  held  to  the  principle  that  each  man 
should  stick  to  the  post  for  which  he  was  best  quali- 
fied, he  established  the  principle  of  rotation,  which 
meant  that  no  group  of  men  would  order  others 
into  battle  without  tasting  battle  as  subordinates 
themselves.  His  idea,  as  he  expressed  it,  was  that 
every  officer  should  "  know  troops."  The  first  indi- 
cation that  a  Staff  officer  was  becoming  remote  on 
that  subject  sent  him  to  a  school  where  the  training 
was  in  no  wise  theoretical.  Thus,  a  chief  of  section 
might  find  himself  commanding  a  regiment  under  the 
chief  of  staff  of  a  division,  perhaps  his  junior,  who 
was  applying  to  him  the  methods  of  an  organization 
which  he  had  helped  to  devise. 

In  our  task  of  building  a  General  Staff  for  han- 
dling a  large  army  in  action,  with  officers  of  the 
French  Staff  as  our  intimate  instructors,  we  had 
some  advantages  which  the  British  lacked,  though 
these  very  advantages  implied  certain  disadvan- 
tages. The  British  were  plunged  into  the  thick 
of  the  fighting  within  less  than  three  weeks  after 
Britain  entered  the  war;  and  their  Staff  development 
was  in  the  course  of  the  relentless  fighting  at  Mons, 
on  the  Aisne  and  in  the  Ypres  salient.    They  applied 


90  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

their  lessons  reeking  from  trenches  bloody  with  mur- 
derous losses.  The  Allied  armies  formed  a  wall 
behind  which  we  had  time  to  study  both  French  and 
British  systems;  and  what  we  had  learned  could  be 
applied  in  the  quiet  sectors  which  we  occupied  at 
first  as  a  preparation  for  active  sectors. 

But  I  am  getting  ahead  of  my  chronology,  which 
is  September,  when  only  the  nuclei  of  the  sections 
were  forming,  and  their  authority  was  in  the  in- 
ceptive stage,  and  when  departmental  system  still 
held,  with  all  requisitions  going  for  approval  to  the 
Adjutant  General's  department,  snow-bound  with 
papers,  which,  later,  was  to  be  restricted  to  records 
and  statistics  and  cognate  details.  The  Staff  sec- 
tions waited  as  all  the  armed  forces  of  the  United 
States  waited,  upon  officer  personnel  from  the  train- 
ing camps  at  home.  A  harbinger  of  the  creation  of 
the  National  Army,  as  the  pupils  got  their  commis- 
sions, was  a  renewed  outburst  of  promotions  for 
regular  officers. 

It  was  an  era  of  universal  congratulations  as  old 
comrades  met  in  the  barracks  square  and  chatted 
about  the  rank  and  assignments  of  friends  in  the 
service.  Leaves  fell  on  shoulders  which  had  borne 
bars  and  eagles  came  to  rest,  until  stars  should  take 
their  places,  on  shoulders  that  had  borne  leaves. 
Brigadier  generals  were  becoming  quite  common 
and  even  major  generals  were  appearing  with  a 
frequency  that  made  them  less  awesome.  The  real 
distinction,  as  a  chief  of  section  said,  was  with  the 
youngster  who  was  the  only  second  lieutenant  at 
headquarters  for  awhile.  He  felt  quite  important 
about  it  until  a  small  consignment  of  second  lieu- 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION       91 

tenants  appeared,  when  he  was  interested  to  know 
whether  or  not  any  of  them  "  ranked  "  him. 

More  regular  officers  were  arriving  from  home 
and  many  reserve  officers,  erect,  clear-eyed  and  sol- 
dierly from  the  physical  regime  they  had  undergone, 
were  hurried  to  Europe  because  of  special  fitness  for 
some  branch  of  Staff  work.  Chiefs  of  sections  and 
departments,  as  they  received  congratulations,  an- 
nounced that  they  had  new  assistants  with  the  glee 
that  goes  with  a  prospective  increase  of  business. 
The  newcomers,  as  they  were  given  tables  in  the 
crowded  rooms  and  settled  down  to  learn  their 
duties,  looked  forward  to  the  time  when  they  should 
have  a  tour  with  the  French  and  British  armies 
for  instruction  at  first  hand  from  veterans.  The 
French  mission  in  the  house  at  the  gate  had  these 
assignments  to  consider  among  its  other  numerous 
responsibilities  in  keeping  the  course  of  Allied  rela- 
tions running  smoothly,  ranging  from  questions  of 
policy,  which  brought  the  chief  of  mission  to  call 
on  the  General  or  the  Chief  of  Staff,  to  claims  by 
French  civilians,  tangles  in  billeting  and  requisitions 
and  locating  lost  passes;  from  difficulties  due  to  too 
much  initiative  on  the  part. of  our  officers  in  their 
search  for  material  to  interference  with  French  cus- 
toms by  an  American  major. 

Later,  the  major  generals  commanding  our  new 
divisions  at  home  and  high  ranking  officers  began 
to  arrive  on  tours  of  observation.  They  had  to  be 
indoctrinated  in  Staff  methods  and  taken  to  visit  the 
front  where  they  might  see  in  practice  what  they 
knew  only  in  theory,  in  order  that  they  might  return 
to  America  better  equipped  for  their  work  in  co- 


92  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ordinating  the  preparations  at  home  with  the 
preparations  in  France.  Not  to  mention  its  tax  on 
the  hospitality  of  the  French  and  the  British  armies, 
"  indoctrination "  became  a  byword  which  made 
bureau  chiefs  lecturers-at-large  at  the  same  time  that 
they  were  schoolmasters  of  their  own  personnel. 

Two  worlds,  regular  and  reserve,  existed  in  the 
one  common  world  of  effort.  The  regulars  were  as 
a  family  whose  numbers  had  known  one  another 
through  the  army  list,  if  at  one  time  or  another  they 
had  not  served  together,  as  they  usually  had.  Their 
talk  when  they  met  was  suggestive  of  the  alumni 
gathering  of  a  college  class.  They  spoke  a  language 
of  their  own  which  was  the  product  of  their  environ- 
ment. The  reserves  could  become  acquainted  by 
asking  one  another  from  what  college  they  were 
graduated;  and  possibly  they  would  find  that  they 
had  friends  in  common. 

Among  the  elder  men  were  many  who  had  been 
chiefs  in  their  own  world,  used  to  riding  in  their 
own  cars  from  fine  homes  to  comfortable  offices. 
They  got  billets  of  small  rooms  without  baths  and 
were  assigned  to  some  of  the  small  tables  in  a  Staff 
section  to  do  clerical  work  under  a  young  regular 
officer  as  their  immediate  superior,  who  wished  that 
their  training  had  included  more  instruction  in  army 
methods  in  which  the  old  army  clerks  had  an  ex- 
pertness  that  was  another  contributing  factor  in  re- 
ducing the  sense  of  importance  of  the  reserve  officers 
who  wanted  to  serve  their  country  in  time  of  war. 

But  they  had  their  moments  of  consolation,  for 
army  forms  were  subject  to  a  fluctuating  process  of 
change  as  the  result  of  the  C.-in-C.'s  demand  for 


BUILDING  AN  ORGANIZATION       93 

reform  before  finality  was  reached  in  the  operations 
of  subordinates.  It  was  none  other  than  a  chief  of 
section  who  exclaimed  one  day:  "  What  is  the  right 
form  for  preparing  a'  telegram  now,  anyway?" 
Or,  as  another  Staff  officer  said :  "  You  find  us  in 
another  process  of  reorganization.  It  takes  time. 
The  old  system  is  well  intrenched,  but  we  took  an- 
other salient  yesterday,  and  the  C.-in-C.  says  we  are 
to  dig  in  and  hold  our  gains." 


IX 

FAITH   IN   THE   RIFLE 

The  road  to  the  training  area — Plans  transformed  into  camps — 
Slow  growth  of  barracks — A  modern  Valley  Forge  in  Lor- 
raine— The  Marines  again — The  reorganized  First  Division — 
British  instructors  as  well  as  French — The  rifle  not  an  obso- 
lete weapon  for  Americans — Advanced  training — A  dress 
rehearsal  before  Marshal  Joffre. 

It  was  always  with  the  joy  of  spirit  and  body  re- 
leased from  bondage  that  I  left  the  mental  sweatshop 
of  those  barrack  offices  for  the  open  where  vigorous 
men,  after  the  day's  drill,  slept  soundly  without  any 
fits  of  wakefulness  over  problems  that  lay  between 
"  incoming  "  and  "  outgoing  "  baskets  on  a  desk. 
The  soldier  has  only  to  obey  commands  and  counter- 
commands,  whether  they  are  foolish  or  wise.  He 
drills;  he  marches;  he  fights — and  offers  his  life  at 
the  hazard. 

There  was  no  road  in  France  which  I  knew  better 
than  that  leading  from  Headquarters  into  the  training 
area.  The  faces  of  all  the  women,  or  their  children, 
who  opened  the  railroad  gates  were  familiar.  The 
husbands  and  fathers  were  away  at  the  war,  or  were 
dead  on  "  the  field  of  honor."  There  was  the  woman 
who  was  always  smiling  in  all  weathers,  sturdy 
enough  to  have  lifted  the  gate  by  main  strength  if 
necessary;  the  very  businesslike  woman  who  received 
your  thanks  with  a  dignified  acknowledgment,  and 

94 


FAITH  IN  THE  RIFLE  95 

one  woman  who  would  never  smile — a  most  unusual 
human  being  in  France.  Perhaps  the  bitterness  of 
war  had  settled  into  her  soul. 

The  road  had  its  clear  straight  stretches,  but 
mostly  it  was  winding  with  the  purpose  of  avoiding 
the  wooded  hills,  always  in  sight,  and  picking  up 
various  villages  on  the  way.  I  knew  it  in  summer 
before  the  crops  were  harvested  and  it  revealed 
only  the  life  of  the  villages,  with  groups  of  German 
prisoners,  regarding  an  American  with  stolid  curi- 
osity, or  groups  of  French  territorials,  who  were 
beginning  to  erect  Adrian  barracks,  and  little  camps 
of  Signal  Corps  men  who  were  putting  up  the  poles 
for  an  American  telegraph  line;  and,  in  autumn, 
when  the  fierce  winds  were  blowing  the  dying  leaves 
off  the  trees  and  some  of  the  barracks  in  their  un- 
painted  wood  ceased  to  be  unattractive  blots  on  the 
background  of  finished  landscape  and  old  villages 
as  they  were  occupied  by  men  in  khaki,  looking 
strange  and  unacclimatized;  and,  in  winter,  when 
snow  lay  on  the  drill  grounds  and  still  more  villages 
and  barracks  were  occupied  by  battalions  which  were 
still  later  arrivals  from  home. 

Thus  I  had  glimpses  of  the  succeeding  stages  of 
development  of  a  plan  which  I  had  seen  expressed  on 
a  map  with  red  diagrams  resembling  protoplasms 
in  their  irregularity  of  form.  Each  was  to  be  a 
training  camp  for  one  division,  its  cabbage,  carrot 
or  potato  shape  the  result  of  combining  open  spaces 
as  drill  grounds  with  a  group  of  villages  and 
barracks  with  shelter  enough  to  accommodate  a 
division.  There  was  something  reassuring  in  the 
number  of  the  protoplasms  which   suggested  that 


96  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  programme  of  troop  transport  might  be  kept. 
The  divisions  were  promised;  General  Pershing  pro- 
posed to  be  ready  for  them  if  the  War  Department 
made  a  spurt  and  caught  up  with  its  schedule. 

There  must  be  barracks  enough  for  infirmaries 
at  least;  and  the  more  men  we  had  living  in  bar- 
racks the  more  comfortable  they  would  be  and  the 
better  under  control.  The  want  of  labor  and  ma- 
terial hampered  us  as  usual.  We  might  not  be  able 
to  provide  the  French  with  something  that  we 
thought  would  materialize  from  overseas,  which,  in 
turn,  prevented  their  carrying  out  their  part  of  the 
plan. 

After  the  ground  was  broken  for  barrack  sites, 
many  days  might  elapse  before  a  motor  truck  began 
piling  up  the  standardized  sections  beside  the  road 
and  then  days  might  elapse  before  they  were 
touched  again  because  the  labor  that  was  to  put 
them  together  had  been  required  on  some  more 
pressing  detail.  Erecting  an  Adrian  barrack  was 
as  simple  as  erecting  a  child's  house  of  blocks.  It 
placed  no  architectural  responsibility  on  the  builder 
once  he  knew  the  system  for  assembling  the  parts 
into  the  structure  which  is  familiar  in  all  the  camps 
in  France.  After  the  war,  I  imagine  that  these  bar- 
racks will  be  moved  to  the  ruined  villages  as  tem- 
porary shelter  for  the  returned  inhabitants,  while 
starting  business  again  or  recovering  shell-pestled 
fields  to  tillage. 

The  French  officer,  who  had  the  task  of  making 
the  map  in  the  office  of  the  American  general  com- 
manding the  area  into  reality,  gave  up  making  prom- 
ises based  on  promises  made  to  him  and  was  doing 


FAITH  IN  THE  RIFLE  97 

his  best  for  sixteen  hours  a  day.  He  did  not  build 
as  many  barracks  as  he  planned.  On  our  part,  we 
did  not  catch  up  with  our  troop  programme  until 
spring.  Somehow,  we  were  to  get  through  that  Lor- 
raine winter  whose  recollection  will  be  as  distinct 
to  our  pioneer  divisions  as  their  battles.  In  repay- 
ing the  French  for  assisting  us  in  the  Revolution 
we  went  through  the  modern  counterpart  of  a  Valley 
Forge  which  should  further  cement  the  friendship  of 
the  two  peoples. 

After  having  been  drilled  all  summer,  the  regi- 
ment of  Marines  which  had  come  with  the  first 
convoy  in  June  was  withdrawn  from  the  First 
Division.  Although  this  was  most  depressing  to 
every  officer  and  man  in  that  it  meant  that  they 
would  not  be  among  the  first  in  the  trenches,  the 
service  to  which  they  were  assigned  was  in  one 
sense  a  compliment  to  qualities  which  are  as  insepa- 
rable from  them  as  their  gallantry.  The  Marines 
have  traditions,  associated  with  ships'  orderliness, 
which  are  kept  up  by  competent  veteran  non-com- 
missioned officers,  that  make  them  models  in  sol- 
dierly deportment.  An  isolated  squad  or  platoon, 
from  the  very  nature  of  their  training,  keeps  to 
form  when  doing  guard  duty  or  police  work.  Pride 
of  corps  sticks  to  a  Marine  sentry  or  messenger 
though  he  is  separated  from  any  commanding  officer. 

From  all  directions  our  widespread  organization 
was  calling  for  details  of  this  dependable  character, 
and  the  Marines  were  chosen  to  meet  the  demands. 
Marines  acted  as  couriers  across  the  Channel;  they 
guarded  our  construction  projects  and  our  property; 
kept  order  on  piers  and  in  laborers'  quarters;  acted 


98  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

as  police  in  Paris  and  at  the  ports,  carrying  out 
Provost  Marshal's  instructions  with  polite  firmness 
in  keeping  with  the  impeccable  neatness  of  their  uni- 
forms. In  their  hearts  they  were  wroth,  but  they 
were  too  proud  to  allow  it  to  influence  their  correct 
deportment. 

Somewhere  between  the  duties  of  the  army  and 
navy  the  sea-soldiers  who  had  survived  from  the 
days  of  the  three-deckers  have  kept  a  place  for 
themselves.  In  strict  military  logic  they  have  a 
place  neither  in  a  modern  navy  organization  nor  in 
a  modern  army  organization.  From  time  to  time 
efforts  have  been  made  to  legislate  them  out  of 
existence,  but  they  have  the  trick  in  practice  of 
keeping  a  place  for  themselves  on  the  quarter-deck 
and  making  one  in  all  expeditions  overseas  owing 
to  the  friends  they  gain  and  their  conduct  whether 
charging  machine  guns  or  policing  an  ammunition 
dump.  They  think  well  of  themelves  in  order  to 
insure  that  the  rest  of  the  world  will  think  the  same. 

Talk  to  them  of  being  absorbed  into  the  army 
and  they  exhibit  a  willingness  to  be  agreeable  by 
absorbing  the  army  if  that  will  serve  the  purpose 
of  doing  away  with  the  anomaly  of  a  separate  mili- 
tary organization  in  France,  with  its  own  recruiting 
and  replacement  system  and  pay  department.  They 
had  to  go  into  the  army  uniform  under  duress  of 
necessity  when  no  material  for  their  own  forest 
green  was  forthcoming,  but  though  in  khaki  they 
kept  their  globe  and  anchor  insignia  on  their  collars. 
When  I  asked  a  Marine  sentry  in  front  of  one  of 
our  army  offices  in  Paris  how  he  liked  his  work,  he 
said: 


FAITH  IN  THE  RIFLE  99 

"  Very  well,  sir.  It  will  fit  me  for  a  job  after 
the  war.  I  can  wear  a  striped  waistcoat  and  brass 
buttons  and  open  cab  doors  in  front  of  a  New  York 
.hotel." 

His  ingrowing  misery  lest  he  be  kept  at  this  peace- 
ful assignment  was  natural  but  groundless.  He 
would  have  his  fill  of  fighting;  for  the  Marines  were 
kept  in  mind  as  one  of  the  factors  in  the  consumma- 
tion of  a  plan. 

After  the  withdrawal  of  the  Marines,  the  First 
Division  was  brought  up  to  full  strength  as  a  com- 
plete regular  division  composed  of  the  i6th,  i8th, 
26th  and  28th  regiments  of  infantry  and  the  First 
Artillery  Brigade  of  the  5th,  6th  and  7th  artillery 
regiments.  Were  they  never  going  into  the  trenches  ? 
the  men  asked.  Experts  said  that  they  were  ready; 
and  they  were  certain  that  they  were.  Generals 
Petain,  Castelnau  and  Foch  had  inspected  them  and 
pronounced  glowing  opinions.  President  Poincare 
had  seen  them  march  past  in  review  in  his  honor  and 
had  spoken  eloquently  to  their  officers. 

"  Wait  until  Joffre  inspects  us!  "  one  soldier  said. 
"  I'll  bet  that  will  be  the  real  signal  that  we  are 
going  in." 

Another  French  infantry  division  had  come  to 
take  the  place  of  the  chasseurs  alpins  in  coaching 
the  First.  A  group  of  British  instructors  had  ap- 
peared to  add  their  vigorous  training  in  certain 
specialties,  particularly  the  bayonet  in  which  the 
British  excelled.  Not  being  embarrassed  by  any 
fear  of  misunderstandings  due  to  language  difficul- 
ties they  had  less  reason  for  being  as  polite  as  the 
French  even  if  it  had  been  in  their  nature. 


loo  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

"  I  thought  that  I  told  you  to  dig  a  trench  last 
night,"  said  a  British  officer  to  a  young  lieutenant. 
"  I  hope  you  don't  call  this  one." 

"  The  men  were  tired  and  the  ground  was  hard," 
explained  the  lieutenant. 

"No  excuses!  Rotten  work!"  was  the  reply, 
which  the  young  lieutenant  thought  sounded  very 
homelike. 

While  as  beginners  with  claims  to  experience,  we 
strove  to  learn  all  the  lessons  of  our  teachers.  Gen- 
eral Pershing,  the  final  and  responsible  instructor 
and  inspector,  insisted  upon  a  single  feature  which 
was  in  keeping  with  our  own  army  traditions.  It 
was  that  our  men  should  learn  how  to  shoot.  Three 
years  of  trench  warfare  had  had  a  pronounced 
influence  on  the  tacticians  of  the  Western  front.  In 
the  course  of  digging  an  endless  maze  of  trenches 
perhaps  they  had  dug  themselves  into  certain  mental 
ruts. 

Infantrymen  fought  from  trench  to  trench.  After 
going  over  the  top  from  their  own  trenches,  when 
they  gained  an  objective  in  their  attack,  they  settled 
down  to  organize  the  enemy's  trenches  they  had 
taken.  Armies  lived  in  trenches,  thought  in  trenches 
and  had  become  habituated  to  the  use  of  the  hand 
grenade  in  defense  and  offense  to  the  neglect  of  the 
rifle,  which  some  extravagant  reports  had  declared 
an  obsolete  weapon. 

The  fact  that  the  man  in  the  trench  rarely  had 
a  target  for  his  marksmanship  was  only  another 
proof  of  the  value  of  the  rifle.  It  was  a  possible 
accurate  shot  from  a  rifle  that  kept  heads  below  the 
parapet;  that  made  you  take  to  a  communication 


FAITH  IN  THE  RIFLE  loi 

trench  five  hundred  yards  or  more  back  of  your 
front  line;  that  sent  a  thrill  of  apprehension  down 
the  backbone  of  a  man  scouting  No  Man's  Land 
as  the  German  flares  lighted  up  the  shell-torn  area 
around  him.  If  infantry  had  to  "  dig  in  "  in  the 
open,  rifle  fire  was  a  controlling  factor  in  mapping 
their  line.  The  retreat  from  Mons  was  covered 
by  the  thin  lines  of  British  infantry,  which  had  been 
taught  how  to  shoot,  coolly  pouring  an  accurate  fire 
into  the  advancing  Germans. 

If  confidence  in  his  bayonet  impels  a  soldier  for- 
ward to  close  quarters  in  a  charge,  good  marksman- 
ship makes  the  soldier  in  ofi^ense  and  defense  hold 
fast  in  his  confidence  that  he  knows  how  to  make 
every  bullet  count.  Even  the  British  had  strayed 
from  the  lessons  of  Mons  and  the  first  battle  of 
Ypres,  where,  outnumbered  five  to  one,  British  regu- 
ular  reserves,  having  no  grenades,  knowing  nothing 
of  their  use,  stuck  to  their  trenches  through  the 
artillery  preparation  with  the  survivors  from  the 
torrent  of  shell  fire  stopping  the  German  charges 
with  their  rifle  fire.  Jackson's  sharpshooters  at  New 
Orleans  were  not  out  of  date  except  in  their  smooth- 
bores; and  never  can  be  as  long  as  a  soldier  carries 
as  his  own  arsenal  a  weapon  which,  as  he  lies  hidden 
in  a  thicket  or  under  cover  of  a  redoubt,  will  send 
a  messenger  of  death  farther  than  any  ball  or  ex- 
plosive he  can  throw. 

When  reports  became  current  that  Allied  soldiers 
had  become  so  addicted  to  the  grenade  habit  that 
they  watched  Germans  in  flight  at  a  distance  of  three 
or  four  hundred  yards  in  the  open  without  shooting 
at  them,  the  tacticians  of  the  Western  front  realized 


102  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

that  it  was  time  to  look  beyond  trench  walls  to  some 
of  the  first  principles  of  war.  Before  this,  General 
Pershing  had  sent  word  to  Washington  saying  that 
"  thorough  instruction  and  range  practice  as  pre- 
scribed in  our  small  arms  firing  manual  was  neces- 
sary "  in  our  training  camps,  and  that  he  wanted 
every  one  of  our  new  soldiers  to  be  an  excellent  shot, 
which  was  something  the  soldier  might  learn  at 
home,  and  even  better  there  because  of  the  difficulty 
of  securing  good  ranges  in  the  thiclcly  populated 
areas  of  France. 

I  have  in  mind  an  occasion  when  he  was  present 
at  a  "  critique  "  which  followed  the  execution  of  a 
problem  ordered  by  him  at  short  notice  to  be  car- 
ried out  under  his  eye.  Our  battalions  had  advanced 
in  the  customary  waves  to  the  taking  of  positions 
under  artillery  preparation  according  to  the  estab- 
lished principles  of  the  limited  objective.  They  had 
bombed  the  enemy  out  of  strong  points;  "mopped 
up  "  the  enemy  trenches  which  they  had  taken;  estab- 
lished their  machine  guns  for  the  defense  of  the 
ground  they  had  gained  and  performed  all  other 
details  in  a  most  satisfactory  manner. 

Our  battalion  commanders,  who  had  worked  out 
their  own  systems  of  attack  after  the  problem  had 
been  set  for  them,  gathered  with  the  company  of- 
ficers concerned  to  hear  what  that  very  erect,  spare 
and  politelv  incisive  French  general  and  his  staff 
experts  and  their  own  General  Pershing  had  to  say 
about  the  way  they  had  done  their  work.  Each 
officer  reviewed  his  plan  in  the  light  of  results,  an- 
swered questions  and  awaited  criticism. 

There  was  all  the  simplicity  and  dignity  of  the 


FAITH  IN  THE  RIFLE  103 

proceedings  of  the  French  academy  in  this  pedagogic 
council  on  the  science  of  war  on  a  hillside  slashed 
with  practice  trenches  with  the  countryside  utterly 
quiet  on  a  misty  day  as  veteran  experts  brought 
home  to  our  minds  the  situations  which  we  should 
have  had  to  consider  if  any  actual  enemy  had  been 
against  us.  Some  of  those  strong  points  reduced 
in  theory  would  not  have  been  reduced  in  fact;  our 
soldiers  instead  of  lying  about  at  ease,  their  ma- 
neuver over,  would  now  be  in  the  thick  of  a  counter 
barrage. 

It  was  not  the  first  time  they  had  received  such 
intimations;  and  their  answering  thought  was  that 
they  wanted  to  be  done  with  mimicry  and  have  a 
chance  at  the  real  thing.  As  an  old  sergeant  said: 
"  The  way  to  learn  to  fight  is  to  learn  to  fight," 
which  is  a  trick  phrase,  of  course.  Men  who  have 
not  learned  anything  about  fighting  before  they  go 
into  a  battle  sometimes  survive  if  they  start  early 
from  the  field  and  run  fast  enough. 

As  the  autumn  drew  on,  the  French  people,  in  the 
reaction  of  their  false  expectations  from  the  great 
ado  made  over  the  landing  of  the  first  expedition 
in  France,  began  to  wonder  if  we  were  ever  going 
into  the  trenches.  Did  the  flights  of  officers  in  auto- 
mobiles, our  urgent  efforts  in  scouring  France  for 
material,  our  scattered  start  in  the  building  of  depots 
and  our  elaborate  plans  signify  that  we  meant  to 
make  only  an  industrial  effort?  Surely  we  were  a 
strange  people. 

Families  who  had  hoped  that  our  youth  would 
release  the  older  Frenchmen  in  the  trenches,  bring- 
ing father  and  husband  home  for  the  winter,  took 


104  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

a  personal  interest  in  the  question.  Many  inferences 
might  be  drawn  in  gossip  behind  the  curtains  of 
censorship  under  the  inspiration  of  secret  German 
propaganda.  If  we  were  really  eager  to  fight 
wouldn't  we  have  sent  in  some  of  our  units  mixed 
with  the  British  and  French  long  ago?  asked  be- 
spectacled Germans  in  Switzerland  who  said  that 
America  was  only  "  pluffing." 

But  the  French  class  of  191 8,  as  I  have  noted, 
had  a  year  of  training  before  going  into  the 
trenches.  Some  of  the  men  of  the  First  Division 
had  been  in  uniform  only  six  months.  A  few  thou- 
sand American  soldiers  more  or  less  in  the  line  were 
immaterial  in  the  military  calculation  which  em- 
braced the  millions  of  the  British  and  French  armies 
en  the  Western  front.  One  division  could  not  take 
over  a  permanent  sector.  It  might  be  the  object 
of  an  attack,  which  would  put  it  hors  de  combat  as 
any  one  of  hundreds  of  the  best  divisions  of  the 
European  armies  had  been  in  a  few  hours  when  the 
enemy  chose  to  concentrate  upon  it  in  overwhelming 
force;  and,  in  that  case,  where  would  be  our  trained 
division  or  divisions  for  replacement?  Where  would 
be  General  Pershing's  independent  command  which 
he  was  under  instructions  to  establish? 

The  soldier's  guess  was  right.  We  went  into  the 
line  shortly  after  Father  Joffre  visited  the  training 
camp.  That  sturdy  soldier,  rich  in  military  wisdom, 
his  fame  secure,  who  had  summoned  our  soldiers  to 
Europe,  was  a  more  striking  figure  in  a  more  striking 
scene  than  on  an  occasion  when  the  multitudes 
cheered  him  at  home  as  he  saw  our  soldiers,  ready 
now  to  take  their  part.    Yet  before  the  curtain  went 


FAITH  IN  THE  RIFLE  105 

up  on  America  in  the  line,  there  was  another  dress 
rehearsal  when  the  First  Division  had  a  period  of 
three  days  serving  in  practice  trenches  under  condi- 
tions like  the  real  thing,  in  the  drizzling  cold  rain 
that  wet  the  men  to  the  skin  and  flooded  dugouts. 


X 


SOME    FIRSTS   FOR  THE   FIRST 

Tke  First  Division  starts  for  the  front — Secrecy  of  the  move — A 
quiet  sector — Apprehensions  of  the  natives  at  the  appearance 
of  our  troops — Our  presence  might  mean  fighting — Gradual 
introduction  to  trench  warfare — The  first  shot — The  first  relief 
for  the  trenches — The  first  prisoner — The  first  wounded  man — 
The  first  German  raid — Our  first  dead — The  three  graves  at 
Bathlemont — Life  in  the  trenches — At  the  gun  pits. 

Athletes  who  know  the  meaning  of  a  break  in 
training  will  appreciate  what  the  order  to  move 
meant  to  the  men  of  our  First  Division.  They 
hailed  any  change  of  scene  from  the  drill  grounds 
which  had  seen  the  hardest  work  of  their  lives;  but 
there  was  a  pull  at  the  heartstrings  as  they  parted 
with  friends  in  the  villages  where  they  had  been 
billeted  for  four  months  who  knew,  as  they  knew, 
without  being  told,  that  they  were  going  into  the 
line. 

Many  a  romance  was  thus  broken  off;  many  chil- 
dren were  to  miss  their  big  playfellows  in  khaki. 
The  old  men  and  women  felt  that  a  world  of  vigor- 
ous young  life  was  slipping  away  from  them.  There 
would  be  no  more  gifts  of  white  bread  for  family 
platters.  Marie  would  have  no  more  lessons  in 
"  Eenglish  "  from  George  "  Smeeth  "  of  "  Meesee- 
seepee."  George  was  really  from  Alabama,  but 
changed  his  State  in  order  to  hear  Marie  say  "  Mee- 

io6 


SOME  FIRSTS  FOR  THE  FIRST       107 

seeseepee."  If  he  had  been  from  Georgia  he  might 
have  told  her  that  all  men  from  Georgia  were  named 
George.  French  villagers  get  much  miscellaneous 
information  from  our  soldiers  about  our  United 
States. 

The  men  of  the  First  had  only  a  short  journey 
on  trains,  a  journey  which  was  kept  very  mysterious. 
They  did  not  know  the  name  of  the  town  where  they 
alighted  until  they  looked  at  the  station  sign;  and 
that  did  not  enlighten  them  particularly,  as  only 
oflScers  carried  a  map.  They  were  not  supposed  to 
ask  where  they  were  going.  What  did  it  matter 
as  long  as  they  were  going?  France  was  France 
to  them,  without  geographic  distinctions.  They 
were  marched  off  to  other  new  billets,  where  they 
removed  their  packs  and,  having  made  themselves 
at  home,  took  a  look  around  and  began  striking  up 
new  acquaintances. 

They  had  seen  guns  on  the  move  before,  guns 
with  French  gunners  who  fired  barrages  for  the  prac- 
tice maneuvers;  but  these  they  now  saw  passing 
along  the  road  had  Americans  mounted  on  the  horses 
and  the  caissons.  It  was  their  first  glimpse  of  the 
division's  artillery  which  had  come  from  its  training 
camp  to  join  up  with  the  infantr)'.  The  batteries 
settled  in  family  groups  in  the  villages,  assigned  to 
them;  and  the  whole  division  awaited  further  orders. 
In  due  course,  someone  would  tell  each  gunner  and 
each  infantryman  what  to  do  next  and  then  what 
next  until  they  arrived  at  their  destination. 

The  strictest  secrecy  about  the  movement  was 
enjoined,  although  the  sector  beyond  Einville  chosen 
for  our  introduction  to  actual  trench  warfare  was 


io8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

about  the  quietest  on  the  Western  front.  Since  the 
great  battle  of  19 14  it  had  seen  no  action  of  account; 
and,  indeed,  since  the  bloody  contest  of  Hartmanns- 
weilerkopf  in  Alsace  had  subsided,  all  the  line  from 
Pont-a-Mousson  to  the  Swiss  border  had  been  tran- 
quil. Neither  side  had  anything  to  gain  here  by 
attack,  a  pacific  trench  existence  being  as  customary 
in  this  sector  as  nagging  malice  was  in  the  Ypres 
salient,  where  the  holding  of  a  mile  of  front  was 
a  more  costly  business  than  the  holding  of  ten  or 
fifteen  or  twenty  miles  in  Lorraine,  Flanders  in 
1915,  Verdun  and  the  Somme  in  1916,  Passchendaele 
in  19 1 7  were  death;  and  through  all  three  campaigns 
Lorraine  was  relatively  a  holiday. 

In  places  the  hnes  were  more  than  rifle  range 
apart.  Occasional  patrols  from  both  sides  kept 
touch  with  the  situation  and  permanent  outposts 
maintained  a  requisite  contact.  Each  side  sent  over 
a  few  shells  every  day.  To  increase  the  number 
was  to  draw  more  fire  from  the  adversary;  and 
then  reprisals  following  on  reprisals  might  develop 
a  state  of  uncomfortable  activity  and  waste  of  am- 
munition which  was  required  for  more  active 
sectors.  Didn't  tired  soldiers  want  some  rest  be- 
tween battles?  A  German  division  and  a  French 
division,  which  had  been  mercilessly  pounding  and 
sniping  and  raiding  each  other  at  Verdun  or  in 
Champagne,  if  they  happened  to  face  each  other  in 
Lorraine  a  week  later  relaxed  as  pugilists  relax  be- 
tween rounds.  When  they  recovered  their  strength 
they  would  turn  violent  again  directly  they  met  in  a 
violent  sector. 

Farmers  tilled  their  fields  close  up  to  the  Lor- 


SOME  FIRSTS  FOR  THE  FIRST      109 

raine  trenches.  French  officers  had  leave  to  run  in 
to  Nancy,  or  German  officers  to  run  in  to  Metz,  for 
recreation  after  their  survival  from  fierce  battles 
elsewhere.  Mutual  consideration  also  in  some  places 
prevented  the  bombardment  of  villages  in  the  back 
area  where  the  weary  battalions  were  billeted. 
Aeroplanes  kept  watch  of  any  signs  of  a  concentra- 
tion which  would  indicate  that  the  other  side  con- 
templated breaking  faith  by  a  real  attack.  The 
occasional  trench  raid  necessary  for  further  informa- 
tion and  the  identification  of  units  was  conducted 
in  a  strictly  economical  manner. 

Our  appearance  disturbed  the  villagers  and 
farmers  of  the  countryside  lest  we  should  start  the 
war  to  going  again,  and  their  apprehension  threw 
some  light  on  the  reasons  for  the  extraordinary  pre- 
cautions about  secrecy.  Weren't  we  Americans? 
Weren't  we  going  into  the  line  for  the  first  time? 
There  was  no  telling  what  kind  of  a  reception  the 
Germans  might  plan  for  us.  Gallic  imagination, 
not  to  mention  American  imagination,  indulged  in 
possibilities. 

"  The  Germans  are  waiting  for  us.  This  is  the 
first  chance  to  get  at  us,"  as  one  of  our  own  officers 
said,  expressing  the  view  of  many. 

He  foresaw  that  German  God,  whom  the  Kaiser 
keeps  in  attendance,  hitting  out  in  one  of  his  rages 
to  make  an  example  of  the  first  Americans  in  the 
line,  as  a  warning  to  inexperienced  provincials  that 
they  had  better  keep  out  of  the  European  war  game. 
By  sufficient  concentration  of  artillery  and  infantry, 
of  course,  either  the  French  or  Germans  could  take 
a  given  sector  of  trenches  and  put  an  enemy  division 


no  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

out  of  action  any  time  they  chose.  This  Is  one  of 
the  factors  which  has  kept  trench  warfare  from  be- 
ing wholly  monotonous. 

But  there  were  two  reasons  against  any  such 
course  on  this  occasion.  The  first  reason  implied 
that  the  German  Is  not  so  dense  about  our  character 
as  he  is  thought  to  be.  As  a  people  we  had  not 
yet  quite  got  down  to  the  business  of  this  war;  we 
needed  awakening  to  the  real  nature  of  our  task. 
Would  the  enemy  be  foolish  enough  to  Inflame  the 
whole  American  public  with  the  hot  desire  to  re- 
venge the  sacrifice  of  the  one  trained  division  we 
had  in  France?  A  second  reason  presupposes  that 
the  German  Is  a  very  capable  soldier.  He  some- 
times makes  local  attacks  for  the  purpose  of  rousing 
the  offensive  spirit  of  his  troops  and  weakening  that 
of  the  enemy's;  but,  ordinarily,  he  is  not  going  out 
of  his  way  for  a  spectacular  stroke  unless  it  Is  part 
of  the  development  of  a  general  plan.  He  judges 
the  obstacle  of  each  division  in  front  of  him  bv  its 
fighting  ability  In  relation  to  his  immediate  object. 

Yet  the  French  command  and  ours  were  bound  to 
be  on  their  guard.  The  same  French  division  which 
had  been  our  instructors  in  our  later  stages  of  train- 
ing accompanied  us  to  the  front  to  continue  coaching 
us.  Our  allies,  who  had  the  new  people  from  over- 
seas under  observation,  by  the  standards  of  their 
old-world  customs  thought  that  we  might  be  ex- 
pected to  do  the  unexpected  thing  at  the  unexpected 
moment  If  left  to  our  own  discretion,  once  we  were 
in  the  trenches. 

Consider  the  Canadians!  Consider  what  they 
had  done  to  quiet  sectors  on  the  British  front !    Not 


SOME  FIRSTS  FOR  THE  FIRST      iii 

finding  much  war  in  progress  in  a  quiet  sector  they 
started  to  make  it  an  active  sector  and  succeeded. 
Incidentally,  they  established  a  precedent  which 
taught  the  Germans  to  keep  in  mind  that  the  Cana- 
dians, the  Australians  and  other  wild  white  men  who 
had  come  from  overseas  were  of  a  restless  nature 
and  required  careful  watching.  The  Americans,  if 
left  to  themselves,  might,  in  their  curiosity  and  eager- 
ness, set'out  at  once  to  see  if  they  could  not  lick  the 
Germans  in  the  opposite  trench;  and  their  artillery, 
thirsting  to  fire  at  something  besides  a  range  target, 
would  back  their  charge  with  barrages  which  would 
develop  an  amount  of  action  that  would  not  only 
disturb  the  quiet  of  Lorraine  valleys,  but  would  also 
interfere  with  Staff  plans. 

We  were  nursed  into  the  trenches  with  all  the  care 
of  father  teaching  son  to  swim.  The  French  are 
a  thorough  people.  They  believe  in  no  short  cuts 
to  learning,  but  in  gradual  processes.  We  were  not 
to  start  algebra  until  we  thoroughly  knew  arith- 
metic, or  geometry  until  we  thoroughly  knew  alge- 
bra. General  Pershing  is  also  thorough.  There 
are  no  elective  courses  at  West  Point. 

Our  battalions,  three  at  a  time,  were  to  be  placed 
between  French  battalions  in  the  line  in  what  was 
to  be  distinctly  considered  as  another  step  in  our 
course  of  training.  Every  American  battery  was 
to  be  paired  off  with  a  French  battery.  The  French 
regulated  the  amount  of  our  artillery  fire  and  their 
observers  named  the  targets.  Our  battalion  com- 
manders could  not  act  without  French  advice.  No 
patrols  could  be  sent  out  without  French  direction. 
We  were  entirely  under  French  command. 


112  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

The  artillery  moved  up  on  the  night  of  October 
22nd.  Battery  C,  of  the  Sixth  Field  Artillery, 
wanted  the  honor  of  firing  the  first  shot  of  the  war. 
Without  waiting  on  going  into  position  at  the  time 
set,  the  men  dragged  a  gun  forward  in  the  early 
morning  of  October  23rd  and  sent  a  shell  at  the 
enemy.  There  was  no  particular  target.  The  aim 
was  in  the  general  direction  of  Berlin.  This  filled 
the  historical  requirement  which  later  sent  the  gun 
to  West  Point  as  a  relic.  Other  artillerists  said 
that  they  did  not  see  anything  professional  in  being 
first  or  in  firing  without  a  target,  and  their  guns 
looked  exactly  like  the  one  sent  to  West,  Point. 

The  night  of  October  23rd,  when  our  infantry 
left  their  billets  for  the  trenches,  was  chill  and  rainy. 
The  scene  might  have  been  Flanders  and  the  troops 
British,  in  1915,  to  one  who  came  out  of  a  doorway 
and  saw  the  passing  helmets  of  the  British  type. 
But  it  was  not  Flanders  and  the  troops  were  Ameri- 
can, in  1917.  The  war  had  become  very  intimate 
through  this  fact. 

"  '  Mum's  the  word,'  said  old  sleuth  in  his  gum 
shoes,"  as  one  soldier  remarked. 

Our  French  mentors  were  more  self-conscious  than 
when  they  had  "  gone  over  the  top  "  in  a  great  at- 
tack. They  felt  their  sponsorship.  American  of- 
ficers thought  of  an  emergency  occurring  when  they 
might  not  act  on  their  own  initiative  and  might  be 
unable  to  interpret  French  instructions.  Young  lieu- 
tenants, at  least,  would  have  much  preferred  to  have 
gone  in  without  a  chaperon  and  taken  their  chances ; 
the  men,  too. 

The  period  of  relief  is  a  favorite  time  for  attack; 


SOME  FIRSTS  FOR  THE  FIRST      113 

knowledge  of  the  hour  at  least  gives  you  a  target 
for  machine  gun  and  artillery  fire.  Suppose  that 
the  Germans  knew  that  this  was  the  night  when  we 
were  going  in !  Anything  might  happen.  The  rum- 
ble of  the  little  ammunition  wagons  and  the  rolling 
kitchens  seemed  to  make  a  roar  that  surely  must 
be  audible  in  the  German  trenches;  the  flaming 
showers  of  sparks  from  one  of  the  rolling  kitchens 
surely  could  be  seen.  At  any  minute  the  German 
artillery  might  turn  on  its  blasts. 

Down  the  street  you  heard  a  sturdy  rhythmic 
tread;  and  then  a  moving  shadow,  taking  form  in 
the  darkness,  developed  into  a  column  of  soldiers 
with  their  faces  much  alike  in  the  gloom.  For  all 
they  knew  they  might  be  going  into  violent  action. 
They  had  been  drilled  and  drilled  and  schooled  and 
lectured,  warned  by  their  veteran  instructors  what 
a  tremendous,  formidable  devil,  with  all  his  prepara- 
tion and  experience,  the  German  was  in  the  compli- 
cated technique  of  trench  warfare,  with  its  sudden 
surprises  of  raid  and  artillery  concentration. 

There  was  nothing  downhearted  about  their 
mood,  as  you  saw  by  their  faces.  They  were  wor- 
ried, as  were  their  officers,  lest  they  should  make 
some  mistake  and  not  remember  all  their  training 
in  case  of  a  crisis.  It  did  not  matter  so  much  to 
them  that  they  might  be  killed  as  that  they  might 
be  killed  in  a  manner  that  was  contrary  to  instruc- 
tions. If  they  had  been  told  to  charge  machine 
guns  then  and  there,  I  think  that  they  would  have 
let  out  the  cry  of  hounds  off  the  leash. 

They  turned  off  from  the  roads  and  were  lost  in 
the  curtain  of  night  as  they  followed  the  paths  to 


114  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  trenches,  whither  no  detached  officer  was  allowed 
to  follow  them.  They  took  the  place  of  the  French 
and  found  the  operation  was  precisely  like  the  re- 
hearsals that  they  had  been  through.  The  novices 
had  at  least  shown  that  they  could  "  take  over " 
without  a  torchlight  procession  and  a  brass  band. 
Though  the  Germans  may  have  known  that  a  relief 
was  in  progress,  they  did  not  know  that  Americans 
had  made  it.  Morning  came  and  those  on  outpost 
duty  looked  out  across  the  fields  of  wet,  dead  grass 
without  seeing  any  trenches,  let  alone  Germans. 
Others,  coming  out  of  their  seeping  dugouts,  saw 
the  fields  of  dead  grass  behind  the  lines  and  then 
had  their  morning  meal  from  the  rolling  kitchen. 
A  few  shells  burst;  our  artillery  sent  the  customary 
rejoinders. 

Was  this  all  there  was  to  It?  Yes,  unless  you 
were  lucky  enough  to  be  included  in  a  patrol  into 
No  Man's  Land  which  returned  without  having  had 
a  fight.  The  French  command  was  gleeful  over 
having  introduced  us  into  war  society  without  one 
untoward  incident.  American  officers  could  point 
out  where  a  shell  nearly  got  a  rolling  kitchen  as  a 
proof  that  we  were  actually  in  the  line ;  young  lieu- 
tenants and  the  men  themselves  considered  that  the 
show  was  not  up  to  the  advertisements. 

On  the  second  day  we  took  our  first  prisoner, 
a  young  fellow  who  was  In  the  ranks  of  the 
Landsturm  regiment  opposite  us,  Instead  of  among 
first-IIne  troops,  because  he  was  physically  defective. 
He  had  lost  his  way  and  found  himself  suddenly 
at  close  quarters,  which  led  to  a  bayonet  wound  In 
the  abdomen.    No  prisoner  In  this  war  ever  received 


SOME  FIRSTS  FOR  THE  FIRST      115 

more  attention,  though  he  was  quite  unconscious  of 
it  as  he  lay  dying  in  our  hospital  under  the  solicitous 
care  of  all  the  doctors  and  attendants,  who  were 
balked  of  their  ambition  to  save  the  life  of  the  first 
wounded  German  who  had  come  under  their  care. 

The  first  American  to  be  wounded  was  an  officer 
of  the  Signal  Corps  hit  by  a  fragment  of  shell;  and 
the  first  soldier  gained  his  right  to  wear  a  chevron 
in  the  same  way.  All  our  hospitals  wanted  the 
privilege  of  receiving  these  two  after  they  had 
passed  through  the  division  hospital.  All  the  news- 
paper correspondents  wanted  intimate  details  about 
the  novel  fact  of  two  wounded  Americans  in  Eu- 
rope, for  reasons  that  made  these  two  men  more 
interesting  than  a  long  casualty  list  six  months  later. 

Our  doctors  and  nurses,  who  had  arrived  in  num- 
bers in  the  early  days  of  the  expedition,  had  been 
waiting  for  this  opportunity.  Distinguished  civil 
surgeons  who  were  Majors  in  the  Reserve  Corps 
found  that  there  was  no  need  yet  of  a  first  operation. 
The  only  way  that  the  claim  of  all  hospital  wards 
to  hospitality  could  have  been  satisfied  would  have 
been  an  operation  cutting  the  two  wounded  men  into 
parts  for  distribution.  Red  Cross  and  chaplains, 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  Salvation  Army  also  wished  to  be 
considered  as  subject  to  a  moment's  call.  Why  not? 
We  were  beginning  the  war.  Shall  I  ever  forget  the 
first  wounded  man  I  saw  in  Belgium  in  August, 
1914? 

We  were  to  have  another  first;  one  of  those  inci- 
dents which  we  had  been  warned  against.  The  Ger- 
mans who  wanted  information,  which  meant  pris- 
oners, were  not  considerate  enough  to  send  out  cir- 


ii6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

culars  announcing  the  programme  of  their  first  raid 
on  us.  A  box  barrage  penning  some  of  our  men 
in  their  dugouts  with  its  hail  of  projectiles;  a  rush 
of  phantoms  in  German  gray  that  was  the  color  of 
the  misty  night,  and  prisoners  and  dead;  and  the 
Germans  were  gone,  leaving  blood  spots  from  their 
wounded  whom  they  had  carried  away  in  the  dark- 
ness— a  trick  which  the  Canadians  had  taught  the 
Germans  and  in  which  we  were  to  excel ! 

Men  half  a  mile  away  from  the  scene  did  not 
know  what  had  happened.  When  the  news  was 
passed  along  there  was  only  one  thought:  to  give 
the  Germans  a  raid  in  return.  Everybody  imagined 
himself  slipping  into  a  German  dugout  and  snatch- 
ing a  German  prisoner  and  driving  him  back  across 
No  Man's  Land.  When  they  learned  that  it  did 
not  suit  French  Staff  plans  that  they  should  have  a 
chance  at  a  "  comeback,"  what  our  soldiers  of  the 

First  said  was  very  much  like  "  Oh,  h ."     Even 

those  who  were  most  regular  at  church  services 
thought  it  in  the  presence  of  chaplains  and  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  workers.  Here  you  have  drilled  for  four 
months,  and  then  you  stand  around  these  muddy 
trenches  and  the  German  slaps  you  in  the  face  and 
you  are  not  allowed  to  hit  back!  Were  we  only 
going  to  play  backstop?  Weren't  we  ever  going 
to  have  a  chance  to  bat? 

Our  first  dead  were  buried  at  Bathlemont  on 
the  afternoon  of  November  4th.  A  detachment  of 
French  sailors  along  with  units  of  French  artillery, 
engineers,  infantry  and  infantry  of  our  own  troops 
were  formed  in  a  square  facing  the  graves.  Gen- 
eral Bordeaux  addressed  them.      The  sense  of  his 


SOME  FIRSTS  FOR  THE  FIRST      117 

touching  speech  was  that  these  men  had  come  a  long 
distance  and  died  in  hand-to-hand  fighting  for  a  cause 
which  could  bring  them  no  material  gain. 

"  Thus  the  death  of  this  humble  corporal  and  of 
these  two  private  soldiers  appears  to  us  with  ex- 
traordinary grandeur.  We  will,  therefore,  ask  that 
the  mortal  remains  of  these  young  men  be  left  here; 
be  left  to  us  forever.  We  will  inscribe  on  their 
tombs:  'Here  lie  the  first  soldiers  of  the  United 
States  to  fall  on  the  soil  of  France  for  justice 
and  liberty.'  The  passerby  will  stop  and  uncover 
his  head.  The  travelers  of  France,  of  the  Allied 
countries,  of  America,  the  men  of  heart,  who  will 
come  to  visit  our  battlefields  of  Lorraine,  will  go 
out  of  their  way  to  come  here  to  bring  to  these 
graves  the  tribute  of  their  respect  and  gratefulness. 
Corporal  Gresham,  Private  Enright,  Private  Hay, 
in  the  name  of  France  I  thank  you." 

A  gray  day,  khaki  and  French  blue,  the  fresh 
earth  of  the  graves,  and  these  words  that  were 
French  and  soldierly  from  a  French  soldier,  while 
a  French  battery  fired  minute  guns  over  the  village 
of  Bathlemont  at  the  German  trenches!  After  the 
address  a  company  of  the  Sixteenth  Infantry  fired 
three  volleys  over  the  graves  and  a  trumpeter 
sounded  taps.  All  the  troops  marched  by  at  the 
salute;  the  General  and  his  staff  advanced  to  the 
graves  and  saluted. 

It  was  a  very  touching  ceremony.  Our  blood  had 
been  shed.  Ten  million  able-bodied  Americans  were 
now  committed  as  they  had  not  been  before  to  their 
task.  If  in  the  future  relations  between  France  and 
America   should   ever   be    endangered,    if    national 


ii8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

selfishness  should  ever  get  the  better  of  reason,  let 
someone  remember  to  mention  the  graves  at  Bath- 
lemont.  Other  Americans  were  to  die  as  bravely — 
how  many  no  one  could  foresee — and  the  plan  was 
to  send  their  bodies  home.  But  these,  the  first  to 
fall,  will  remain. 

The  casualties  that  followed  were  about  the  usual 
number  for  the  front  that  we  held  for  the  time  we 
held  it;  but  on  the  whole  the  First  had  more  experi- 
ence of  trench  life  itself  than  of  its  dangers  in  the 
ensuing  gloomy,  wet  days  and  long,  wet  nights. 
Rain  set  rivulets  to  running  in  the  trenches  and 
turned  rivulets  into  torrents,  and  moist,  clinging 
snow  was  blown  into  the  faces  of  the  outposts. 

In  the  early  period  of  the  war  every  writer  who 
had  the  privilege  of  visiting  trenches,  a  privilege 
which  became  more  and  more  common,  attempted 
to  make  readers  see  a  trench  and  realize  its  at- 
mosphere. But  by  the  summer  of  191 6  the  great 
trench  description  contest  was  over,  even  in  the 
magazines.  Future  efforts  were  left  to  amateurs 
who,  upon  seeing  a  trench  and  after  having  read 
dozens  of  descriptions,  exclaimed :  "  No  one  has 
ever  described  this !  "  and  set  out  to  write  a  de- 
scription of  their  own  which  no  one  would  publish. 

Trench  descriptions  were  now  revived  for  the 
American  public  because  Americans  were  in  the  line. 
An  American  cook  presided  at  the  first  rolling 
kitchen  you  saw  as  you  entered  the  trenches.  It 
was  an  American  ofl^cer  who  came  stooping  to  re- 
ceive you  bv  candlelight  in  his  P.  C.  dug  into  the 
hillside.  The  same  slippery  old  duck  boards  were 
there  as  you  made  your  way  along  the  line,  but  the 


SOME  FIRSTS  FOR  THE  FIRST      119 

men  who  pressed  their  backs  against  the  trench  wall 
to  let  you  pass  were  Americans.  American,  too,  was 
that  dripping  sentry  peering  out  into  the  rain,  and 
the  figures  huddled  in  the  little  cavity  they  had  made, 
with  a  shelter  tent  for  a  roof  of  a  machine-gun  posi- 
tion, and  that  "  bunch  of  huskies  "  who  turned  their 
faces  up  when  you  put  your  head  into  a  dugout. 
They  all  saluted;  they  were  used  to  saluting  now 
and  "  sir  "  had  become  second  nature.  It  was  they 
who  made  any  trench-stale  American  take  a  new  in- 
terest in  trenches  and  trench  life. 

Exposure  had  not  increased  the  sick  report,  thanks 
to  the  gradual  hardening  process  of  the  physical 
regime  in  anticipation  of  just  such  an  experience  as 
they  were  having.  They  were  lean  and  keen  and 
carrying  out  their  routine  satisfactorily  according; 
to  professional  standards,  these  men  who  had  been 
callow  and  untrained  when  they  landed  in  France. 

Back  at  the  artillery  positions,  which  you  reached 
after  trying  to  keep  your  footing  on  the  slippery 
hillside  and  wading  in  icy  wa^er,  the  men  around  the 
gun  pit  under  the  camouflage  sheet  of  chicken  wire 
flecked  with  patches  of  green  cloth,  which  hid  it 
from  observation  by  aeroplanes,  were  also  from  the 
United  States  of  America.  Their  eyes  were  shining 
with  the  zest  of  city  men  on  a  hunting  trip.  Their 
faces  were  wet  from  the  rain  and  the  earth  around 
them  was  wet,  but  their  smiles  were  dry  with  Ameri- 
can humor. 

All  that  was  old  to  the  French  gunners  in  the 
battery  across  the  road  was  new  to  them.  Theirs 
was  the  spirit  of  a  youngster  out  squirrel-shooting 
with  his  first  rifle.     Left  to  their  own  initiative,  they 


120  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

would  have  kept  a  stream  of  shells  in  the  air  with 
all  the  prodigality  of  the  small  boy  who  expends  his 
firecrackers  before  breakfast  on  the  Fourth  of  July, 
in  order  to  show  "  old  Henry  Boche,"  as  they  called 
him,  that  they  were  on  the  job. 

When  the  third  and  last  group  of  battalions  of 
infantry  had  had  their  turn  in  the  trenches  and  the 
artillery  came  out  of  the  sector  at  the  same  time,  all 
hands  were  asking  what  was  the  purpose  of  the 
practice  attacks  on  the  drill  ground  if  they  were  to 
sit  opposite  the  Germans  inactive.  No  one  knew 
the  answer  better  than  the  Germans,  who  gave  vet- 
eran troops  from  the  Eastern  front,  where  they 
had  become  slack,  three  months'  intensive  training 
before  they  could  be  made  wise  enough  not  to  be 
caught  napping  on  the  Western  front.  The  graduate 
of  a  technical  school  has  not  been  educated  in  vain 
because  the  first  work  given  him  by  a  railroad  is 
clerical  detail  or  handling  a  gang  of  laborers. 

"  I  suppose  we'll  get  some  more  training  now 
before  we  go  in  the  line  again,"  said  one  of  the  men. 
He  was  right.  The  First  settled  down  for  another 
course  of  instruction. 


XI 


THREE  MORE   DIVISIONS 

A  provincial  French  town  gradually  transformed  into  an  American 
city — The  New  England  Division  arrives — "No  Tobac  "  signs 
greet  soldiers  from  tobacco-growing  Connecticut — Fine  troops, 
the  New  Englanders — Cape  Cod  lives  neighbor  to  Brattleboro 
and  Hartford  to  Penobscot — The  Rainbow  Division  reaches 
Lorraine — Dishonest  cold — Plenty  of  American  food — Baths  for 
the  greatest  bathers  in  Europe,  our  boys — The  movies  and 
chewing  gum — The  incredibly  slow  mails. 

The  town,  which  was  the  geographical  center  of 
the  American  Zone  of  Advance,  may  seem  deserted 
and  unimportant  after  the  war,  but  perhaps  more 
comfortable  and  normal  with  its  official  world  again 
restricted  to  the  mayor  and  the  local  customs  official. 
These  two  may  have  the  pioneer  Franco-American 
Officers'  Club  all  to  themselves,  including  the  baths. 
According  to  the  chroniclers,  it  was  a  solemn  occa- 
sion when  these  baths  were  dedicated.  Many  of  the 
Americans  present  were  still  unacclimatized  enough 
to  consider  that  any  expression  of  their  intense  emo- 
tion would  be  self-incriminating. 

An  officer  of  the  Medical  Corps  who  established 
a  laboratory  there  was  the  first  American  settler  in 
the  town.  Soon  afterwards  the  war  correspondents 
took  up  their  quarters  in  the  local  hotel,  whose  pro- 
prietress was  warranted  in  taking  them  for  the  ad- 
vance guard  of  our  army,  which  laid  a  typewritten 


122  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

barrage  on  the  cable  office  every  night  after  their 
return  from  the  drill  grounds  of  the  First  Division. 
As  press  censor,  I  shared  with  them  for  six  months 
the  pride  which  is  associated  with  old  inhabitants, 
while  we  watched  a  conservative  community  yield 
gradually  to  the  processes  of  Americanization.  We 
saw  division  and  corps  headquarters  establish  them- 
selves and  outrank  us;  the  dining-room  of  the  hotel 
became  as  hard  pressed  as  a  railroad  restaurant 
when  an  excursion  train  without  a  diner  stops  twenty 
minutes  for  dinner;  the  growing  prosperity  of  the 
local  merchants  who  had  hitherto  done  only  a  desul- 
tory business,  as  they  had  been  too  far  removed 
from  the  front  for  wartime  profits;  and  the  trans- 
formation of  a  vacant  shop  into  a  branch  of  a 
famous  New  York  bank,  with  regulation  American 
cashiers'  windows. 

When,  one  morning,  I  found  the  streets  swarming 
with  men  from  Boston  I  knew  that  the  Twenty-sixth 
Division  (loist,  102nd,  103rd  and  104th  regiments), 
which  was  formed  from  the  National  Guard  of  New 
England,  with  Major  General  Clarence  R.  Edwards 
in  command,  had  begun  to  arrive.  The  weather 
was  normal  for  that  season  of  the  year.  It  was 
raining.  Boston  looked  miserable,  not  so  much  on 
account  of  the  weather  as  on  account  of  the  "  No 
Tobac!  "  signs  in  the  tobacconists'  windows  and  the 
want  of  any  money  on  the  part  of  many  of  the  men 
with  which  to  buy  tobacco  if  there  had  been  any 
in  town.  The  signs  did  not  deter  them  from  going 
inside  the  shops  and  peering  wistfully  into  all  the 
little  compartments  on  the  counter  where  cigars  and 
cigarettes   are  kept   and   making  the   gesticulatory 


THREE  MORE  DIVISIONS  123 

argument  of  a  man  expiring  for  want  of  a  smoke. 
The  tobacconists  tried  "  No  Tobacco!  "  in  place  of 
"No  Tobac!  "  in  the  windows  without  effect:  and 
then  "  No  Tobacco !  No  Cigars  or  Cigarettes !  ", 
which  was  more  convincing. 

The  penniless,  with  pay  two  months  in  arrears  and 
with  mouths  watering,  stared  at  cans  of  preserves 
in  shop  windows  and  cracked  a  joke  about  saving 
their  wealth  to  subscribe  to  the  Liberty  Loan,  as 
the  government  needed  it  to  pay  its  soldiers.  Of 
course,  there  had  been  a  slip  between  Washington 
and  a  training  camp  at  home  and  another  between 
a  training  camp  and  France,  and  eventually  the  pay- 
master would  connect  up  their  descriptive  lists  with 
the  Treasury  Department  and  their  pockets;  but, 
meanwhile,  what  was  the  use  of  being  a  citizen  of 
the  richest  country  in  the  world  or,  particularly,  of 
Connecticut,  a  tobacco-growing  State? 

In  those  days  we  were  not  sending  divisions  across 
the  Atlantic  with  the  facility  of  dispatching  suburban 
trains  from  the  city  in  rush  hours.  A  division  ar- 
rived by  detachments  and  gradually  filled  up  its 
sector  of  the  training  area.  The  chief  of  staff  of 
the  Twenty-sixth  was  not  grieved  that  twenty-seven 
thousand  New  Englanders  did  riot  descend  upon  him 
at  the  same  time.  He  did  not  need  to  look  at  the 
calendar  to  learn  that  winter  was  coming  on.  The 
calls  for  stoves  and  firewood  were  a  sufficient  re- 
minder; and  the  mud  tracked  into  his  room  by  of- 
ficers who  came  to  tell  him  their  woes  was  only 
another  indication  of  the  truth  of  the  statement  that 
there  is  never  a  drought  in  Lorraine. 

He  smiled  and  told  them  that  later  on  the  rain 


124  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

might  change  to  snow;  and  when  it  did  everybody 
agreed  that  it  was  just  as  wet  as  the  rain  and  no 
colder.  As  for  the  winds  that  blew  when  there  was 
no  snow  or  rain,  if  Boston  would  only  imagine  that 
they  were  from  the  East  it  would  be  less  homesick. 
How  should  he  know  whether  things  that  were  miss- 
ing were  in  Hoboken  or  on  the  sea  or  why  one 
detachment  got  the  officers'  baggage  of  another  de- 
tachment! But  he  was  straightening  things  out  as 
fast  as  he  could.  Wood  was  being  cut;  stoves  were 
arriving — and  remember  that  we  were  in  a  state  of 
war.  Why  will  some  men  forget  that  fact  when  they 
go  to  war? 

No,  the  New  Englanders,  in  their  moist  overcoats 
with  water  dripping  from  the  rims  of  their  rumpled 
campaign  hats,  did  not  look  like  dress  parade;  only 
ducks  would  in  the  Lorraine  weather.  Certain  critics 
let  it  be  known  that  nobody  expected  much  from  the 
National  Guard.  You  could  not  change  its  char- 
acter as  long  as  the  officers  were  friends  and  neigh- 
bors of  the  men  and  elected  by  their  votes.  Of- 
ficially the  Twenty-sixth  was  not  National  Guard. 
Under  the  new  scheme  of  things,  as  directed  by  the 
experts  in  scientific  warfare,  it  was  a  part  of  the 
United  States  army,  In  which  a  division  was  a  di- 
vision, with  no  distinction  between  divisions,  and  the 
transfer  of  personnel  between  divisions  became  an 
established  principle  for  developing  homogeneity. 
But  the  flavor  of  locality  and  the  pride  of  locality 
endured.  These  regiments  from  New  England  were 
regiments  with  Civil  War  and  even  Revolutionary 
traditions. 

Something  that  the  Lorraine  weather  could  not 


THREE  MORE  DIVISIONS  125 

change  was  the  physique  under  the  overcoats.  The 
men  were  more  than  the  average  height,  broad- 
chested  and  vigorous.  Many  had  been  on  the  Bor- 
der. The  recruits  were  of  equally  good  material, 
including  the  volunteers  and  about  a  hundred  men 
from  the  National  Draft  who  had  been  jumped  into 
uniforms  and  hurried  on  board  ship  to  fill  up  the 
ranks  of  a  regiment.  Saluting  had  not  yet  become 
a  universal  habit  with  them  according  to  accepted 
requirements  in  France.  General  Edwards  looked 
after  this  with  a  system  of  his  own. 

"You  don't  salute  your  superior  officer?"  he 
would  say  as  he  stopped  a  man.  "  Well,  your  Gen- 
eral salutes  you  in  order  to  show  you  how  to  salute," 
and  the  man  addressed  never  failed  to  salute  there- 
after. 

Detachments  of  the  Twenty-sixth  kept  appearing 
until  all  were  in.  Now  General  Pershing  had  two 
complete  divisions.  Every  New  England  State  was 
represented  in  some  village  in  France,  as  well  as 
all  of  New  England's  occupations,  from  lobster 
fishers  from  Maine  to  factory  hands  from  Rhode 
Island.  Cape  Cod  lived  neighbor  to  Brattleboro 
and  Hartford  to  Penobscot. 

"  Are  there  many  Harvard  men  among  you?"  a 
Harvard  man  asked  a  soldier  of  the  Twenty-sixth. 

"  Some  of  us  are  workingmen,"  the  soldier  said 
pithily. 

As  soon  as  any  lot  of  newcomers  were  settled  in 
their  billets  they  did  what  American  soldiers  and 
the  Canadians  always  do.  Their  restless,  nervous 
energy  impels  them  to  movement.  They  wanted  to 
know  where  they  were  and  what  was  doing  generally. 


126  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

What  was  the  chateau  on  the  hill  like?  Who  lived 
there?  Let's  go  up  and  see  the  old  place.  Madame 
la  Comtesse  looked  out  of  her  window  to  see  figures 
in  khaki  walking  about  in  her  garden.  As  they  were 
Allies  and  Americans  at  that,  she  did  not  disturb 
them.  Until  discipline  restricted  their  tourist  pro- 
clivities, you  met  New  Englanders  on  the  road  miles 
from  their  billets,  bound  to  see  the  next  village. 
After  they  had  seen  that,  curiosity  called  them  to 
the  next  with  a  view  to  ascertaining  if  all  the  villages 
in  France  were  alike.  Then  discipline  had  to  inter- 
fere with  such  pilgrimages. 

The  soldiers  of  French-Canadian  origin  in  the 
division  had  everything  their  own  way.  After  cen- 
turies of  transplantation  they  were  on  the  native 
soil  of  their  ancestors  speaking  a  French  that  made 
them  the  more  interesting  to  the  natives  in  that  they 
had  to  explain  words  of  a  patois  as  old  as  Eliza- 
bethan English,  which  Joan  of  Arc  would  have  un- 
derstood better  than  the  modern  Lorrainer,  whose 
language  has  changed  with  time  more  than  that  of 
Quebec.  They  were  ^t  home  at  once  as  they  took 
the  village  girls  for  strolls,  leaving  English-speaking 
rivals  mere  dumb  spectators  of  a  triumphant  prog- 
ress. Their  readiness  to  act  as  interpreters  in  af- 
fairs of  business  for  their  comrades  excluded  affairs 
of  romance.  There  was  talk  on  the  part  of  the 
neglected  majority  of  having  the  French-Canadians 
formed  into  a  separate  unit  and  sent  to  the  Italian 
army. 

In  view  of  their  service  on  the  Border,  where  they 
had  been  under  his  command.  General  Pershing  had 
considered  that  the  National  Guard  divisions  should 


THREE  MORE  DIVISIONS  127 

alternate  with  regular  divisions  (expanded  by  a 
large  percentage  of  recruits)  in  the  pioneer  service 
in  France.  If  it  were  fitting  that  the  honor  of  being 
the  first  regular  division  should  go  to  the  First,  then, 
in  the  name  of  the  Pilgrims  who  landed  at  Cape  Cod 
and  of  the  founders  of  Jamestown,  the  first  Na- 
tional Guard  division  which  was  to  participate  in  the 
Odyssey  of  America  in  Europe  ought  to  come  from 
either  New  England  or  Virginia. 

By  the  same  token,  it  seemed  proper  that  the  next 
division  of  former  Guardsmen  sent  to  France  should 
represent  the  whole  country.  After  the  confinement 
of  a  transport  and  a  train  ride  in  box  cars,  as  new 
to  them  as  it  was  to  all  their  predecessors  and  suc- 
cessors in  the  flow  of  troops  across  the  Atlantic,  the 
first  lot  of  the  Forty-second  (165th,  i66th,  167th 
and  1 68th  regiments),  commanded  by  Major  Gen- 
eral William  A.  Mann  and,  later,  by  Major  General 
Charles  T.  Menoher,  had  their  introduction  to  vll- 
lajre  billets  In  the  fullness  of  their  first  contact  with 
discomforts  to  which  the  New  Englanders  were  be- 
coming accustomed.  Every  American  soldier  is  a 
novice,  a  rookie,  when  he  goes  to  a  training  camp; 
again,  when  he  goes  on  board  ship;  again,  when  he 
arrives  in  France;  again,  when  he  goes  into  the 
trenches  for  the  first  time.     After  this  he  "  knows." 

No  rainbows  welcomed  the  Rainbow  Division  to 
its  area.  Sun  is  required  to  make  a  rainbow.  After 
all  that  they  had  heard  about  "  sunny  France,"  what 
our  men  saw  of  France  that  winter  made  them 
ready  to  believe  that  there  are  no  nuts  in  Brazil 
and  no  spicks  In  Java.  Reports  of  halcyon  summer 
days  in  other  parts  of  France  only  irritated  them  to 


128  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

fresh  satire.  It  might  be  fair  weather  on  the 
Riviera,  but  that  did  not  help  you  any  in  the  mist- 
ridden  and  rain-splashed  valleys  behind  the  Vosges. 
On  account  of  their  late  arrival  the  Rainbows  had 
particular  reasons  for  losing  their  faith  in  all  that 
the  guide  books  said  about  foreign  parts.  Their 
chief  of  staff  had  troubles  of  his  own  no  less  press- 
ing than  other  chiefs  of  staff. 

The  Rainbow  Division  was  celebrated.  The  idea 
of  an  all-American  division  touched  the  chord  of 
popular  sentiment;  its  name  had  the  appeal  of 
romance,  in  keeping  with  the  crusade  of  armed  men 
to  a  distant  land.  This  was  bound  to  make  it  think 
well  of  itself,  which  is  a  good  thing  for  any  division 
if  it  does  not  lead  to  the  mistake  of  accepting  reputa- 
tion as  a  guarantee  of  success.  Fame  did  not  bring 
steam  heat  to  the  barn  lofts  where  the  men  slept. 
Rather,  it  was  something  to  live  up  to.  The  Rain- 
bows must  make  good  because  they  were  the  Rain- 
bows; and  they  did  make  good. 

Meanwhile,  the  Second  Division  (9th  and  23rd 
regiments  and  5th  and  6th  Marines),  under  Major 
General  Omar  Bundy,  was  forming,  in  addition  to 
the  regiment  of  Marines  already  in  France  now  be- 
ing mobilized  from  its  detached  service.  These  four 
divisions,  the  First,  the  Second,  the  Twenty-sixth 
and  the  Forty-second,  were  to  be  associated  in  our 
minds  as  a  group.  All  were  In  the  trenches,  all  had 
their  own  artillery  ready  to  act  with  them  long  be- 
fore other  divisions,  owing  to  circumstances  rather 
than  to  any  Intention  of  preference. 

They  formed  the  nucleus  of  our  first  Corps.  Our 
thoughts  were  centered  on  them  in  the  early  days  of 


THREE  MORE  DIVISIONS  129 

the  expedition.  Their  efficiency  was  the  subject  of 
discussion  through  the  various  stages  of  their  prog- 
ress, while  the  immense  inflow  of  divisions  in  the 
early  summer  of  19 18  made  it  diflicult  to  remember 
the  names  of  the  new  arrivals  who  needed  shorter 
periods  of  training  in  France,  thanks  to  the  longer 
and  more  up-to-date  training  which  they  had  received 
at  home  before  they  went  into  the  line  in  the  critical 
hours  of  the  German  offensive  of  that  period.  Still 
another  reason  for  their  isolation  is  the  fact  that 
the  four  passed  through  the  first  winter.  Nothing 
that  other  divisions  may  do  will  ever  rob  them  of 
this  distinction,  which  will  make  the  first  service 
stripe  on  their  sleeves  precious  to  every  officer  and 
man. 

It  was  only  natural  that  the  heroine  of  France 
should  come  from  Lorraine,  as  a  soldier  said.  Joan 
was  bred  in  fortitude  by  the  climate.  The  most 
loyal  Lorrainer  will  concede  that  the  climate  is  moist 
and  chill  in  winter.  And  he  is  used  to  it.  He  accepts 
it  as  the  Filipino  accepts  typhoons  and  the  Arab 
accepts  the  desert.  It  must  make  vigorous  men,  as 
you  may  work  out  of  doors  the  year  round.  There 
are  no  such  extremes  as  we  have  between  winter 
and  summer. 

The  cold  of  Lorraine  was  not  honest  cold,  accord- 
ing to  our  ideas.  We  think  of  honest  cold  as  that 
of  the  Northern  States  and  Canada,  with  frost  on 
the  windows  and  snow  on  the  ground.  The  tem- 
perature at  which  we  keep  our  rooms  in  winter  makes 
us  really  a  warm-weather  people.  Steam  heat  in 
office,  factory,  house  and  trains  has  become  second 
nature  to  the  inhabitants  of  our  Northern  States. 


130  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Even  our  American  ancestors  who  broke  the  ice 
in  the  pitcher  for  their  morning  ablutions,  as  a 
writer  would  have  said  in  the  language  of  the  day, 
would  have  found  northern  Europe  trying.  They 
were  used  to  clear,  dry,  biting  cold;  the  kind  that 
freezes  your  ears  but  not  your  marrow.  That  of 
Lorraine  is  more  like  ours  than  is  Flanders  cold, 
with  less  humidity  but  enough,  when  reenforced  by 
the  lower  mountain  temperatures,  to  prevent  a  Lor- 
raine house  with  a  few  sparks  in  the  fireplace  from 
being  any  more  comfortable  than  a  Flanders  house. 
It  made  the  American  body  into  a  sponge  which  it 
saturated  with  icy  mist  and  rain. 

Northerners  who  have  gone  south  in  winter  and 
shivered  more  in  the  tropical  houses  than  at  home, 
will  understand  how  Alabama,  which  was  supposed 
to  be  at  a  disadvantage,  stood  this  kind  of  cold  as 
well  as  Ohio,  which  looks  out  from  rooms  heated 
to  seventy  degrees  Fahrenheit  upon  the  icy  stretches 
of  Lake  Erie.  Billets  which  were  comfortable  to 
the  French  soldier  could  not  be  comfortable  to  the 
American.  The  idea  that  war  was  without  hard- 
ships in  France  was  a  paradox  to  men  who  would 
have  preferred  sleeping  in  tents  in  Alaska,  where 
I  have  felt  the  cold  less  than  in  France,  to  sleeping  in 
fireless  rooms  in  France. 

Their  post-war  recollections  will  picture  that  win- 
ter as  something  heroic  for  the  pioneer  divisions. 
Even  Valley  Forge  did  not  become  heroic  until  Mon- 
mouth and  Yorktown  immortalized  it.  The  soldier 
who  had  a  mansion  at  home  and  the  one  who  lived 
in  a  tenement  missed  the  same  thing — heat.  As  one 
soldier  said  as  he  climbed  into  a  hayloft  for  the 


THREE  MORE  DIVISIONS  131 

night,  *'  I'd  like  to  be  a  cloth  and  be  wrapped  around 
a  steam-pipe  until  spring." 

We  must  have  more  heat  than  the  French,  and 
we  had  it.  Our  soldiers  cut  the  wood  from  the 
forests  to  make  it.  It  was  green,  it  sizzled,  but 
with  a  proper  draft  it  would  burn.  An  influx  of 
stoves  such  as  that  region  of  France  had  never 
known  met  the  situation  successfully.  The  Adrian 
barracks  were  kept  cozy;  officers  in  chateaux,  where 
great  rooms  were  heated  by  a  small  grate,  suffered 
more  than  the  men  who  were  in  barracks.  All 
were  in  the  same  boat  when  we  took  over  billets 
from  the  French  at  the  front;  and  all  four  divisions 
were  in  the  line  before  the  winter  was  over.  Then 
an  Adrian  barracks,  by  contrast,  seemed  a  paradise. 

The  overseas  cap  came  to  take  the  place  of  the 
campaign  hat.  When  mothers  at  home  saw  pic- 
tures of  their  sons  wearing  it,  they  said  that  their 
sons  did  not  look  like  American  soldiers,  which  is 
another  illustration  that  the  unfamiliar  thing  seems 
unnatural.  Our  dignified,  long  officers'  overcoats, 
soaking  up  moisture  until  they  were  like  a  clammy 
shroud,  yielded  to  the  short  trench  coat  with  its 
fleece  or  wool  lining  and  water-proof  exterior  but- 
toned up  close  under  the  chin. 

We  learned,  too,  that  the  Lorrainers  depend  upon 
internal  as  well  as  external  stoking  to  keep  warm. 
They  eat  heartily  and  plenty  of  videments  and  do 
not  come  to  their  breakfast  with  a  steam-heat  taste 
in  their  mouth  which  calls  for  grapefruit.  Go  from 
a  chateau  in  France  in  midwinter  to  a  steam-heated 
hotel  in  New  York,  and  if  you  do  not  change  your 
diet  you  will  suffer  from  vertigo.     Return  to  the 


132  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

chateau  and  your  shivering  flesh  requires  that  you 
put  sweets  and  fats  in  your  human  furnace. 

There  was  never  a  time  when  the  men  lacked 
plenty  of  food — American  food.  The  simmer  of 
bacon  made  sweeter  music  than  the  Metropolitan 
Orchestra.  There  were  canned  corned  beef  hash, 
great  rations  of  fresh  beef  as  well  as  canned  "  willy," 
and  big  satisfying  loaves  of  white  bread  as  well  as 
hard  bread,  and  Boston  did  not  go  without  its  baked 
beans.  What  a  morning  for  you  when  you  received 
your  first  invitation  from  a  mess  for  a  real  American 
breakfast  of  corn  cakes  and  syrup  and  fried  ham 
and  coffee  that  was  not  cafe  au  laitf  French  cuisine 
was  all  very  well,  but  you  did  not  know  how  good 
home  things  were  until  you  went  to  war.  Such  a 
gorge  in  that  Lorraine  climate,  with  the  sauce  of 
appetite,  left  no  envy  of  people  dilly-dallying  over 
a  banquet  at  a  Fifth  Avenue  hotel.  French  officers 
invited  in  for  the  corn  cakes  said  polite  things  about 
them  and  ate  the  amount  politeness  required,  won- 
dering more  at  our  dietary  regime  than  our  cus- 
tom of  drinking  cold  water  at  luncheon  and  dinner. 

In  the  early  days  the  privilege  that  you  envied 
your  friends  at  home  more  than  their  food  was  their 
bathtubs.  Other  peoples  have  thought  that  we  must 
be  an  unclean  people  because  we  bathe  so  much. 
Our  national  insistence  upon  beginning  the  day  by 
lying  full  length  in  a  tub  of  water  is  a  habit  which 
some  of  our  men  thought  had  become  a  necessity 
until  they  were  billeted  in  a  French  village.  They 
felt  sticky  at  first,  but  after  a  while  it  seemed  quite 
natural  and  they  had  no  more  apprehension  about 
an  early  demise  from  uncleanhness  than  had  had 


THREE  MORE  DIVISIONS  133 

their  great-grandfathers,  who  considered  an  "  all- 
over  "  once  a  week  enough,  with  lapses  even  fronni 
this  schedule  when  there  was  a  prolonged  "  cold 
spell." 

One  officer  said,  after  an  effort  with  cold  water 
in  a  cold  room,  that  he  was  not  going  to  bathe  again 
until  he  had  blue  mold  on  his  back.  He  was  out 
for  the  non-bathing  record  in  Lorraine.  But  that 
was  pose.  He  did  not  miss  a  chance  for  a  pilgrim- 
age to  the  officers'  club  for  a  "  hot  soak,"  which  was 
a  concentration  of  joy  more  than  equaling  the  after- 
glows from  fifty  regular  morning  baths,  or  a  shower 
after  you  have  beaten  your  deadliest  rival  at  golf. 
If  you  had  a  meal  of  hot  cakes  with  syrup  after- 
wards,— well,  there  were  compensations  in  fighting 
the  battle  of  civilization.  When  a  certain  major 
general  made  a  trip  of  fifty  miles  to  get  a  real  bath, 
it  was  too  important  an  event  for  his  staff  to  keep 
it  a  secret.  They  knew  that  he  would  feel  like  a 
lieutenant  general  when  he  returned. 

Bathhouses  were  built  for  the  soldiers  and  they 
took  their  turns  at  a  weekly  "  scraping";  and,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  every  town  of  any  size  had  a  public 
bathhouse.  For  our  national  dipsomania  in  bathing 
should  not  be  construed  as  casting  reflection  upon  our 
allies.  When  this  army  returns  from  France,  more 
Americans  than  ever  before  will  not  feel  that  they 
ought  to  be  expelled  from  their  clubs  and  lodges 
because  they  have  missed  their  morning  bath. 
Everything  is  habit,  as  travel  teaches  in  the  course 
of  making  you  broad-minded. 

The  men  were  healthy  in  spite  of  the  climate  and 
of  those   pessimists   who   drew   long   faces   in   the 


134  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

autumn  as  they  thought  of  the  winter  and  exclaimed : 
"  We're  going  to  have  a  lot  of  sickness !  "  Ravages 
of  pneumonia  and  epidemics  of  spinal  meningitis  and 
other  diseases  which  were  prophesied  did  not  ma- 
terialize. There  was  less  sickness  than  in  some  of 
our  training  camps  at  home,  which  does  not  imply 
that  there  were  not  cases  of  pneumonia  and  that 
there  was  not  influenza  which  ran  its  contagious 
course,  along  with  sore  throats  calling  for  the  use 
of  the  iodine  brush  by  the  medicos.  Coughs  and 
sneezing  ran  up  and  down  the  line  when  a  company 
fell  in;  but  the  small  number  of  deaths  could  not 
be  gainsaid.  Mothers  had  worried  unnecessarily 
about  their  sons;  and  they  would  have  worried  more 
if  the  pessimists  had  been  allowed  to  shout  their 
apprehensions  from  the  housetops. 

Not  even  soldier  philosophy  and  the  medico's  skill 
could  lengthen  the  short  days  or  remove  the  gloom 
of  overcast  skies  to  men  far  from  home,  who  were 
children  of  the  sunlight  which  never  deserts  our 
country  long  even  in  winter,  when  its  glare  is  on  the 
snow  and  ice  in  the  north  at  the  same  time  that  it 
kisses  the  white  caps  of  the  Sierras,  burns  on  the 
desert  and  lays  its  broad  sweep  over  the  Southland. 
Yet  we  never  think  of  speaking  of  "  sunny  America," 
except  in  referring  to  some  part  particularly  adver- 
tised in  tourist  folders  which  also  call  us  to  "  sunny 
Hawaii  "  and  "  the  sunny  Caribbean." 

But  there  was  compensation.  The  Y.  M.  C.  A. 
came  along  with  its  moving-picture  shows  including 
the  latest  reels  from  home,  though  one  reel  showing 
people  bathing  at  Palm  Beach  brought  a  wry  laugh. 
Its  huts  sent  out  beams  of  welcoming  light  on  dark 


THREE  MORE  DIVISIONS  135 

nights.  Its  supplies  were  arriving  regularly,  includ- 
ing gum.  Children  followed  the  soldiers  begging 
for  "  goom."  We  shall  set  the  jaws  of  Europe  to 
working  on  great  waste  of  masticatory  energy  and 
possibly  to  eating  peanuts  in  rooting  at  future 
French  ball  games.  The  bat,  the  mask  and  the  glove 
had  to  be  laid  aside;  but,  in  order  to  keep  fit,  we 
undertook  football  and  other  games  that  could  be 
played  in  the  cold  and  the  mud. 

The  worst  trial  of  all  was  the  slowness  of  the 
mails.  How  little  the  average  person  knows  the 
meaning  of  a  letter  from  home  to  a  soldier!  His 
letters  from  home  are  all  the  home  he  has.  They 
summon  home  to  his  imagination  in  periods  of 
reality  which  are  separated  by  periods  of  conjecture, 
whose  anxiety  was  dependent  upon  the  length  of 
time  between  letters.  The  longer  the  time  a  letter 
takes  to  arrive,  the  less  assuring  is  the  visualization 
haunted  by  the  words,  "  I  wonder  what  has  hap- 
pened since  it  was  written !  " — happened  to  those 
you  love,  to  those  whom  you  worry  about  though 
you  do  not  worry  about  yourself  even  when  you  go 
over  the  top.  I  can  imagine  no  more  heinous  prop- 
aganda that  could  be  devised  to  ruin  an  army's 
morale  than  to  keep  all  their  letters  from  the  men 
for  a  month  before  they  went  into  battle,  or  to  have 
them  receive  belated  letters  telling  of  family  troubles. 

A  man  would  say,  triumphantly :  "  I  got  a  letter 
from  home  which  has  been  only  three  weeks  in  com- 
ing! "  and  all  that  day  and  the  next  he  would  be 
happy  with  that  letter  in  the  pocket  of  his  blouse. 
Of  course,  there  were  letters  mailed  before  it  and 
connecting   up   with   it   which   had   not   yet   come. 


136  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Steamers  across  the  Atlantic  were  slow.  Mail  came 
by  transports  and  passenger  steamers  of  varying 
speeds  and  subject  to  varying  delays.  The  system 
of  unit  addresses  was  difficult  of  application  and 
organizations  were  on  the  move  in  France  as  well 
as  en  route  from  home;  but  all  these  mitigating  cir- 
cumstances did  not  change  results  or  wholly  explain 
them,  especially  when  a  division  had  a  settled  train- 
ing area. 

It  was  unjust  and  stupid  to  place  the  blame  upon 
that  poor  postal  clerk  fresh  from  the  States,  who 
had  opened  up  a  post  office  in  a  training-camp  town. 
He  had  to  deal  with  French  postal  authorities  when 
he  spoke  no  French  and  to  depend  upon  French 
trains.  His  brain  ached  from  contact  with  unfa- 
miliar difficulties.  If  he  ever  got  back  to  his  regular 
postal  job  in  the  U.  S.  A.,  you  could  bet  your  life 
they  wouldn't  get  him  in  France  again  or  on  any 
other  job  which  had  him  started  straight  for  a 
lunatic  asylum !  People  at  home  did  not  write 
P.  O.  903,  or  Co.  A,  3rd  Bn.,  96th  Div.,  as  an  ad- 
dress; and  postal  clerks  did  not  receive  letters  in 
California  which  belonged  in  New  England,  and 
have  people  complain  because  letters  addressed  to 
Boston  from  New  York  were  late  because  they  had 
gone  by  way  of  Reno,  Nevada.  How  was  he  to 
know  that  that  Signal  Corps  outfit  had  left  Balin- 
court,  Lorraine,  for  Ablainville,  Brittany? 

According  to  his  notion,  a  set  of  cards  bearing 
the  mail  addresses  of  the  units  of  the  American  Ex- 
peditionary Force  were  evidently  piled  on  a  map 
of  France  and  then  stirred  about  and  then  piled 
again  and  stirred  again,  and  then  shot  into  bags  and 
sent  to  the  four  corners  of  the  compass.     He  was 


THREE  MORE  DIVISIONS  137 

"up  against  it,"  as  he  said;  as  much  up  against  it 
as  if  he  had  been  put  in  charge  of  the  mail  delivery 
of  ancient  Babylon  without  any  knowledge  of  hiero- 
glyphics. All  he  could  do  was  to  wait  until  he  was 
transferred  to  another  place  or  recalled  as  the  result 
of  complaints;  and,  meanwhile,  he  could  strive  for 
transport  to  brings  the  bags  to  the  office  and  try  to 
locate  the  owners  of  letters  when  he  opened  the 
bag.  The  things  said  about  the  postal  service  in 
general,  some  justifiable  and  some  unjustifiable,  were 
warm  enough  to  make  dry  spots  in  the  Lorraine 
weather. 

Meanwhile,  training  proceeded  in  the  damnable 
weather.  All  four  divisions,  instructed  by  French 
units,  were  going  through  the  curriculum  of  the 
First  Division  amended  in  keeping  with  later  de- 
velopments in  tactics.  The  short  days,  the  mud,  the 
rain  and  the  snow  limited  the  hours  of  work.  Skir- 
mish lines  could  not  lie  long  in  sodden  fields;  bomb- 
ing up  practice  trenches  filled  with  water  had  its 
limitations.  But  anyhow,  if  you  got  ill  they  sent 
you  to  a  fine  hospital,  with  American  women  nurses 
who  talked  United  States  and  made  you  think  that 
you  were  as  important  as  General  Pershing,  while 
you  were  having  a  much  better  time  than  he  was. 
There  was  little  grumbling,  not  even  from  the 
National  Guardsmen  who  were  expected  to  write 
passionate  letters  of  complaint  home  to  their  con- 
gressmen. Our  men  played  the  part  of  men. 
Through  that  winter  they  disproved  any  idea  that 
our  national  wealth  had  made  us  soft;  and  in  the 
spring  they  were  to  disprove  any  idea  that  this 
generation  of  Americans  has  not  the  courage  of  its 
forebears. 


XII 


PULLING  UPSTREAM 

The  Italian  and  Russian  disasters — The  British  oflFensive  of  1917 — 
Reasons  and  disappointments — ^Thirty  per  cent  superiority  of 
German  numbers — ^Reasons  for  our  three-million-men  pro- 
gramme— Difficulties  of  transportation  increased  during  the 
winter— Men  who  triumphed  and  men  who  worked  their  hearts 
out — Our  national  energy — The  Inter-allied  Conference — Faith 
of  our  Commander-in-Chief  in  America's  part — The  Staff 
College  of  the  A.  E.  F. — All  desires  expressed  in  the  one 
word,  ships. 

In  the  censor's  office  you  might  read  the  detailed 
press  cable  sent  home  about  our  three  battalions  in 
the  line  and  our  first  prisoner.  At  Headquarters 
you  might  read  the  brief  enemy  communiques, 
picked  up  from  the  German  wireless  by  our  Signal 
Corps  and  typewritten  on  a  sheet  of  note  paper, 
telling  of  the  sweep  of  the  Austro-German  forces 
into  the  plain  of  Lombardy  and  the  taking  of  more 
prisoners  than  the  total  of  the  American  forces  in 
France.  This  concerned  us  no  less  than  it  con- 
cerned the  British  and  the  French,  who  had  been 
looking  us  over  all  summer  and  wondering  what 
they  might  expect  from  us.  What?  Ask  the  ton- 
nage expert  at  Headquarters !  Ask  the  shipbuilders 
at  home  !    Ask  the  American  people  ! 

"  The  Italians  will  hold  on  the  Piave !  "  we  were 

138 


PULLING  UPSTREAM  139 

saying.  This  was  the  thing  to  say.  But  holding  on 
the  Piave  was  not  winning  the  war. 

There  was  other  news  than  that  from  Italy;  news 
from  Russia,  news  from  the  British  front.  The 
campaign  of  19 17,  begun  with  great  expectations 
of  the  Anglo-French  offensive  and  continuing  in  the 
British  offensive  and  an  Italian  offensive,  had  ended 
in  the  collapse  of  Russia,  in  the  bloody  stalemate 
grapple  of  the  British  with  the  Germans  on  Passchen- 
daele  Ridge,  and  a  disaster  to  the  Italian  arms. 

From  that  day,  just  as  we  had  entered  the  war, 
when  we  read  in  the  news  dispatches  about  Russian 
soldiers  refusing  to  salute  their  officers  and  about 
battalions  commanded  by  committees,  it  was  clear 
that,  unless  a  miracle  happened,  the  Russian  army 
could  not  recover  its  organization  for  any  important 
offensive  action  in  this  war.  Any  army  takes  long 
to  build;  when  demoralization  sets  in  it  crumbles 
rapidly. 

Yet  against  the  logic  of  experience  we  might  try 
to  convince  ourselves  that  Kerensky  would  become 
the  Napoleon  of  the  Russian  revolution,  bringing 
order  out  of  chaos.  After  he  was  out,  we  might 
hope  that  the  Bolsheviki  and  the  Council  of  Work- 
men and  Soldiers'  delegates  would  learn  in  time 
from  bitter  experience  that  only  force  counted 
against  the  German  army,  and,  summoning  the  de- 
fensive spirit  in  Russian  manhood  for  Russia's 
defense,  would  still  maintain  a  force  sufficient  to  hold 
many  German  divisions  in  position  on  the  Eastern 
front. 

The  British  army,  formed  and  trained  to 
Kitchener's  programme  of  delivering  in  the  third 


I40  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

year  of  the  war  a  finishing  blow  to  the  enemy — 
which  it  would  have  delivered  if  Russia's  enormous 
man-power  had  been  continuously  exerted  with  any- 
thing like  its  military  force  of  19 14-15 — was  to 
fight  all  summer,  after  the  Germans  had  checked 
the  French  offensive  in  Champagne,  in  trying  to 
carry  out  part  of  the  original  Anglo-French  offen- 
sive plan  of  19 1 7.  It  fought  because  it  must  fight; 
it  fought  to  hold  the  Germans  off  Russia  in  order 
to  give  Russia  time  to  recover,  if  it  were  in  her  to 
do  it;  fought  to  retain  the  Allied  initiative  in  the 
West;  fought  to  keep  German  divisions  from  ham- 
pering the  Italian  offensive,  and  fought  to  keep  Ru- 
mania in  line,  while  it  looked  to  the  rainbow's  end  of 
a  break. 

Between  attacks,  oflUcers  and  men,  reading  the 
reports  of  our  preparation  for  the  mastery  of  the 
air  and  of  our  recruits  training  in  camps  at  home, 
asked  the  practical  soldier  question,  "  How  many 
divisions  have  the  Americans  in  France  ?  When  are 
they  going  into  the  line  ?  "  They  knew  nothing  of 
what  statesmen  were  planning;  nothing  about  all 
the  shipping  in  the  world  which  a  unity  of  purpose 
might  summon  from  the  scattered  service  of  indi- 
vidual enterprise  to  war  service. 

Perhaps  it  would  have  been  better  for  the  British 
to  have  given  up  Russia  and  Rumania  as  lost,  and 
to  have  held  fast  without  striking  when  the  French 
army  could  not  spare  the  men  for  a  united  general 
offensive  after  its  gallant  assistance  in  the  Flanders 
attack  of  July  31st.  But  this  was  not  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  British  army.  No  army  had  ever  had 
the  principle  that  the  offensive  alone  wins  more  thor- 


PULLING  UPSTREAM  141 

oughly  inculcated  by  racial  and  national  tradition 
as  well  as  by  training  than  the  British  army.  All 
its  plans  and  preparations  culminated  in  this  year  as 
the  year  when,  from  spring  to  winter,  it  should  flail 
the  Germans. 

It  was  due  to  attack  and  it  attacked,  applying  the 
bulldog  grip  in  the  Ypres  salient,  that  wickedest  and 
bloodiest  of  battlefields.  What  followed  was  the 
very  grinding  mill  of  war  over  ground  where  new 
shell-bursts  threshed  the  earth  that  had  been 
threshed  and  mixed  with  the  bones  of  brave  men 
for  over  three  years.  There  could  be  no  tactical 
surprises  for  the  enemy  after  the  beginning  of  the 
campaign;  there  was  no  room  for  maneuvering  in 
that  small  space  crowded  with  men  and  material 
and  guns,  hub  to  hub;  but  in  the  phlegm  of  their 
resolution  the  British  kept  driving  for  small  gains, 
and  with  the  stubbornness  of  their  phlegm  sought 
to  make  protection  for  holding  their  gains  in  the 
porous  soil  where  to  dig  a  trench  is  to  dig  a  well. 
All  in  that  calm,  ordered  way  in  keeping  with  British 
character,  rested  battalions  moved  up  to  take  the 
place  of  the  survivors  of  exhausted  battalions,  over 
roads  familiar  for  three  years  to  British  soldiers, 
and  past  the  old  ruins  of  villages  pounded  by  fresh 
bombardments.  They  were  the  same  British  when 
I  saw  them  in  the  thick  of  their  effort  of  19 17  that 
they  were  in  19 14,  19 15  and  19 16;  stoical  and 
dogged,  however  bloody  the  work  at  hand. 

The  Ypres  salient  was  a  morass  of  death  which 
was  as  a  magnet  drawing  German  division  after 
German  division  into  the  common  shambles.  As 
Arnold  von  Winkelried  took  the  spears  to  his  breast, 


142  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  British  army  received  the  German  reserves,  say- 
ing, "  Bring  your  German  divisions  to  us !  We'll 
keep  them  off  the  Eastern  front  and  the  Isonzo  no 
matter  what  it  costs  I  " 

The  British  attack  at  Cambrai,  which  followed, 
was  like  so  many  of  the  Allied  actions  in  the  war — a 
stroke  by  one  Ally  to  help  out  another  who  was  in 
trouble.  Here,  necessity  forced  a  cooperation  that 
had  never  been  developed  in  a  common  offensive 
with  England  unready  when  Russia  was  ready,  with 
Italy  unready  when  France  was  ready  and  Russia 
already  breaking  down  when  England  was  ready. 
While  British  and  French  divisions  were  hurrying 
to  assist  the  Italians  on  the  Piave,  a  direct  blow  on 
the  British  front  should  prevent  more  German 
divisions — if  that  were  the  German  plan — from 
rushing  to  Italy  to  follow  up  the  victory  at 
Caporetto. 

Whether  the  cause  was  the  British  counter-blow 
or  the  fear  to  extend  himself  with  a  long  line  of 
winter  communications,  at  all  events  the  German 
did  not  press  his  advantage.  He  left  the  Italians, 
with  the  help  of  British  and  French  reenforcements, 
occupied  in  preparing  their  new  defenses  and  struck 
back  at  the  British  at  Cambrai.  His  riposte  there 
was  costly  for  him,  but  epochal.  For  the  first  time 
since  his  attack  on  the  Canadians  in  June,  191 6, 
in  the  Ypres  salient,  he  had  taken  the  initiative  on 
the  Western  front.  Such  was  the  notice  he  served 
on  the  world  as  food  for  its  winter  thought. 

Not  content  with  this,  he  announced,  through  his 
oily,  whispering  agents  in  Switzerland,  that  he  was 
preparing  for  a  great  offensive  on  the  Western  front; 


PULLING  UPSTREAM  143 

and  this  method  of  promulgation  was  taken  in  some 
quarters  to  mean  that  his  next  objective  would  be 
Italy  or  Salonica.  What  should  be  kept  secret  if 
not  an  offensive?  Such  publicity  was  a  little  too 
obvious  to  minds  priding  themselves  on  their  per- 
spicacity in  detecting  German  deception.  It  was  Bis- 
marck who  said  that  if  you  told  the  truth  no  one 
would  believe  you,  which  was  an  indication  that  he 
had  no  illusions  about  the  world's  opinion  of  him- 
self. 

A  conversation  sometimes  crystallizes,  in  the  sim- 
plicity of  direct  phrase,  the  nature  of  a  situation. 
One  day  when  I  was  in  the  office  of  a  responsible 
American  officer  and  we  were  talking  of  the  outlook, 
he  wrote  two  sets  of  figures  on  a  pad.  On  one 
side  were  the  Allied  divisions  on  the  Western  front, 
French,  British,  Belgian,  Portuguese  and  American ; 
on  the  other  was  the  number  of  German  divisions 
then  on  the  Western  front  and  the  number  which 
might  be  spared  from  the  Eastern  front.  He  added 
up  the  columns  and  passed  the  pad  across  the  table. 

"  There  is  something  for  our  people  to  chew  on," 
he  said. 

I  saw  that  the  Germans  had  a  superiority  of 
thirty  per  cent. 

"  It's  up  to  us,"  he  added. 

Comb  France  and  England  for  more  man-power 
and  still  they  could  not  make  up  the  difference.  The 
next  Allied  offensive  must  depend  upon  American 
divisions.  Meanwhile,  before  we  won  the  war  we 
must  stop  the  Germans  from  winning  it.  Could 
the  Allies  hold  without  large  reenforcements  from 
America?     It  would  seem  that  they  ought.     Thirty 


144  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

per  cent  was  not  sufficient  superiority,  even  in 
pitched  battle  days,  to  insure  a  decision.  How,  then, 
could  it  be  on  a  solid  front  with  no  room  for  flank- 
ing? But  the  theory  of  a  stalemate  had  received 
a  shock  at  Caporctto,  where  the  Germans  had 
smashed  through  the  Italian  line  and  thrown  armies 
in  rout,  which  had  set  the  cautious,  who  had  had 
great  faith  in  trench  warfare,  upon  another  tangent 
of  thought.  The  German  had  the  interior  line ;  the 
advantage,  though  the  general  plan  of  his  offensive 
were  known,  of  concealing  the  point  of  concentra- 
tion where  he  hoped  for  a  break. 

The  truth  in  those  figures,  if  not  the  figures  them- 
selves, was  telegraphed  to  America;  but  not  the  full 
truth  of  our  situation.  With  the  Allies  depending 
upon  America,  morale  raised  its  hand  in  warning 
against  depressing  an  Italy  still  tremulous  on  the 
Piave  after  her  great  losses,  a  France  which  faced 
the  fourth  winter  of  the  war,  a  Rumania  isolated  but 
loyal,  and  whatever  elements  of  organization  re- 
mained in  Russia. 

Propaganda  was  now  the  ascendant  word  of  the 
Allied  lexicon.  We  Allies,  perhaps,  were  given  to 
riding  one  idea  hard  for  a  time  and  then  taking  up 
another  as  the  sure  means  to  victory,  when  the  only 
sure  means  is  all-round  military  efficiency  and  hard 
fighting.  The  Italian  disaster  was  ascribed  to  the 
infiltration  of  German  propaganda  into  the  Italian 
ranks  which  had  broken  Italian  morale.  The  same 
influences  might  be  at  work  in  France.  We  must 
not  support  them  with  discouraging  reports. 

It  was,  indeed,  up  to  us!  The  million-men,  two- 
million-men,    three-million-men    project    needed    no 


PULLING  UPSTREAM  145 

further  justification  than  the  two  sums  in  addition 
on  the  pad.  Victory  had  again  raised  the  morale 
of  the  German  army.  There  was  no  sign  of  any 
uprising  among  the  German  people  which  would 
obviate  the  necessity  of  our  bringing  over  the  great 
army  which  our  Staff  in  France  had  prepared  to 
receive. 

We  were  still  behind  our  programme  in  troop 
transport.  Hoboken  had  become  the  byword  of  our 
disappointments.  It  was  the  symbol  for  home  ports 
where  supplies  accumulated,  awaiting  shipment.  The 
submarine  situation  might  be  better,  but  its  toll  still 
exceeded  construction.  The  outline  of  a  ship  was 
burned  in  the  heart  and  brain  of  every  organizer 
striving  to  get  on  with  his  work.  There  might  be 
supplies  enough  for  the  men  we  had  in  France,  but 
these  were  only  the  incidental  routine  of  army  exist- 
ence beside  the  requirements  for  construction. 

The  Italian  disaster  had  its  effect  upon  every 
village  in  France,  upon  every  human  being,  as  the 
result  of  the  new  demands  upon  an  economic  organ- 
ization whose  balance  was  delicately  held  in  meeting 
the  needs  of  the  French  army  and  people  and  our 
own  increasing  demands.  Italy  had  lost  guns  and 
ammunition  and  quantities  of  material  of  all  kinds 
brought  from  abroad,  which  must  be  replaced  from 
abroad.  All  traffic  must  cease  on  the  railroad  lines 
to  Italy  to  leave  them  open  for  the  passage  of 
British  and  French  divisions;  the  call  for  rolling 
stock  for  their  transport  had  priority  over  all  other 
demands. 

Where  previous  lines  of  communication  for  these 
divisions  had  been  short  as  a  part  of  the  system  of 


146  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

supplying  the  two  armies  in  their  settled  zones,  they 
must  now  run  across  France  and  halfway  across 
Italy.  This  rearrangement  passed  on  its  effects, 
altering  many  plans,  delaying  their  fruition,  keeping 
coal  from  people's  grates,  limiting  factory  outputs 
and  delaying  all  kinds  of  shipments.  The  pressure 
for  the  new  railroad  locomotives  from  America  and 
for  more  rolling  stock  was  accordingly  the  greater. 
Cargoes  arriving  from  America  were  still  unclassi- 
fied in  many  instances;  ships  with  every  pound  of 
tonnage  space  previously  taken  now  arrived  not  fully 
laden,  sometimes  not  by  twenty  or  thirty  per  cent 
of  their  capacity. 

Partly  finished  warehouses,  piers,  railroad  yards 
and  structures  of  all  kinds  situated  at  the  different 
points  which  were  to  be  connected  into  a  system 
were  not  yet  ready  for  use.  The  material  for  build- 
ing others  was  scattered  about  the  sites.  Men  who 
looked  at  their  blue  prints,  measuring  results  by 
their  ambition  and  the  number  of  unfilled  requisitions 
which  were  vital  to  progress,  knew  that  it  was  against 
orders  to  become  discouraged.  Then  the  labor, 
which  was  waiting  upon  material,  arrived;  or  the 
material  that  labor  awaited,  whether  tools,  corru- 
gated iron,  stanchions,  cranes,  light  railway  cars, 
cars,  pumps,  dredge  parts,  piles,  rails  or  railway  ties 
or  cement,  appeared  one  day  as  another  tribute  to 
the  accomplishments  of  the  French  railroad  system 
under  its  heavy  strain,  manned  by  old  men,  often 
poorly  trained,  who  had  taken  the  place  of  the 
younger  men  who  had  fallen  in  action  or  were  in 
the  trenches.  To  have  the  next  vital  part  in  your 
operations  lying  upon  a  pier  at  a  base  port  was 


PULLING  UPSTREAM  147 

far  from  having  it  delivered;  and  priority  from  a 
port  to  the  point  of  delivery  in  France  was  no 
less  a  trying  problem  than  was  priority  from  in- 
terior points  in  the  United  States  to  Atlantic  ports 
where  our  own  railroad  system  was  getting  its  first 
experience  of  war  strain. 

Engineers  in  France  who  had  been  with  the 
Panama  Canal  project  from  the  first  knew  from 
experience  that  a  stage  of  reaction  would  come. 
Reserve  officers  with  reputations  for  excellence  in 
some  particular  line  did  not  always  succeed  in  France. 
Trained  in  home  conditions,  their  minds  were  too 
fixed  for  adaptability  to  different  problems  in  a  dif- 
ferent environment.  Again,  when  they  had  adapta- 
bility their  personal  efficiency  could  not  take  the  place 
of  material  and  tools,  or  they  broke  down  from 
overwork,  or  were  harassed  by  superiors  with  minds 
incapable  of  expanding  to  greater  responsibilities 
or  of  appreciating  difliculties  and  who  sought  scape- 
goats for  their  own  inefliciency.  The  major,  who 
had  the  ear  of  a  colonel  who  in  turn  had  the  ear  of 
a  brigadier  general,  might  sacrifice  captains  and 
lieutenants  to  save  himself.  With  such  a  concentra- 
tion of  authority  as  the  great  project  required,  the 
axes  of  private  ambition,  in  some  instances,  were 
bound  to  be  ground  at  the  expense  of  the  whole. 

I  remember  hearing  an  officer  say  of  a  subordi- 
nate :  "  J.  does  not  know  anything  about  his  work. 
The  reputation  he  has  made  is  all  bluff.  We've 
got  to  get  another  man.  I'm  going  to  take  hold 
of  the  matter  in  person."  The  truth  was  that  the 
speaker  did  not  know  anything  about  the  work  him- 
self.   It  was  his  own  directions  that  made  the  mis- 


148  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

take  of  forcing  J.  to  a  system  contrary  to  his  own 
ideas.  He  now  gave  orders  to  J.'s  successor  to  carry 
out  J.'s  system,  which  cuiceeded  to  his  own  credit  in 
the  eyes  of  his  superior  officer.  This  gentleman 
would  go  on  rising  until  some  superior  found  him 
out. 

Again  an  officer  might  have  the  department  that 
he  had  built  up  moving  well,  when  an  officer  who 
had  the  ear  of  a  major  general  would  take  it  over, 
leaving  the  pioneer  stranded.  This  was  clever  per- 
sonal politics  but  hardly  good  patriotism,  and  some- 
times sacrificed  a  man  who  had  too  fine  a  sense  of 
service  to  make  his  situation  known.  As  a  people, 
we  have  an  inclination  not  to  believe  in  merit  if  it 
is  not  advertised.  But  1  am  speaking  of  exceptions 
in  order  to  be  discriminate.  Other  superiors,  who 
had  true  purpose  in  keeping  with  their  ability  to 
make  plans,  delegate  authority  and  rise  to  responsi- 
bility, won  the  loyalty  and  devotion  of  all  their  sub- 
ordinates. 

Men  triumphed  and  men  worked  their  hearts  out; 
men  had  their  hearts  broken;  men  who  worked  and 
worried  for  sixteen  hours  a  day,  in  order  to  prove 
that  they  were  on  the  job,  lost  the  sense  of  firm 
resolution  and  decision  which  the  confidence  of  su- 
periors and  Sunday  holidays  and  an  occasional  golf 
game  kept  alive  in  them  at  home.  But  to  knock  off 
for  a  day  and  walk  across  the  fields  was  the  sign 
that  you  were  losing  your  grip,  until  higher  au- 
thority intervened  and  sent  men  who  were  on  their 
nerves  off  for  a  rest  to  Nice,  which  became  the 
fesort  where  tired  officers  recuperated. 

Reorganization,  with  new  orders  confusing  the 


PULLING  UPSTREAM  149 

minds  of  executives,  was  necessary,  but  with  some 
superiors  it  became  a  habit. 

"  Good  God !  Here  are  some  more  instructions !  " 
exclaimed  a  foreman  of  a  project  one  day.  "  More 
instructions  telling  me  how  to  do  things  instead  of 
telling  me  what  they  want  done  I  If  I  don't  know, 
what  am  I  here  for  I  " 

He  continued  to  carry  out  each  set  of  new  in- 
structions, which  only  led  to  more  inefficiency  until  a 
major  general  divorced  that  superior  from  a  field 
clerk  and  a  typewriter. 

It  was  our  national  energy — the  energy  that 
sought  gold  in  California  and  Alaska,  that  built 
railroad  lines  and  founded  cities — driving  and  bat- 
tling, hustling  and  pounding,  that  saved  the  day  at 
the  same  time  that,  in  hectic  periods,  it  defeated  its 
own  ends.  The  very  dissatisfaction  of  men  with 
results  was  one  of  the  most  auspicious  signs.  Even 
selfish  ambition  means  application  of  some  sort.  A 
layman  visiting  the  sites  of  construction  work  could 
see  how  the  high  lights,  the  vague  forms  here,  the 
concrete  masses  there,  were  developing  in  the  nega- 
tive of  the  project,  and  his  imagination  could  fill  in 
the  picture.  If  he  had  no  imagination  he  was  a 
poor  American. 

There  was  not  an  hour  of  the  day  when  we  were 
allowed  to  forget  our  dependence  upon  the  people 
at  home.  Sometimes  we  thought  of  the  effort  in 
America  as  the  effort  of  some  gigantic  piston  hardly 
fast  to  its  moorings,  walloping  about,  as  it  drove 
through  a  tiny  orifice  what  seemed  only  driblets  of 
supplies  for  us  considering  our  vast  requirements. 
Some  of  the  newspaper  dispatches  from  Washington 


I50  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

and  New  York  indicated  to  us,  in  some  of  our  moods, 
that  one  idea  of  the  war  prevailed  in  Europe  and 
another  in  America,  where  there  appeared  to  be 
activity  in  every  line  except  in  shipbuilding.  The 
Atlantic  seemed  a  million  miles  broad  to  us. 

It  is  trite  to  say  that  the  Allied  countries,  fighting 
for  freedom,  suffered  in  their  military  efforts  from 
the  effects  of  freedom  and  also  from  the  confidence 
that  victory  must  be  on  the  side  of  the  just  cause. 
Unhappily,  a  good  many  just  causes  and  a  good 
many  civilizations  have  fallen  before  ruthless  mili- 
tary conquerors.  The  Germans  had  some  reason 
for  their  view  that  we  were  out  of  our  heads  in 
thinking  that  the  war  was  going  our  way.  It  has 
taken  defeats  to  bring  to  the  Allied  minds  essentials 
which  should  have  been  obvious  from  the  first.  The 
Italian  disaster  aroused  us  again  to  the  necessity  of 
cooperation  and  summoned  the  Inter-allied  Confer- 
ence in  Paris,  when  the  United  States,  which  had  no 
national  territorial  aims  to  satisfy,  might  act  as  a 
unifying  element. 

The  Supreme  War  Council  at  Versailles  did  not 
bring  unity  of  command,  although  it  established  a 
permanent  body  for  the  coordination  of  effort. 
When  Russia  was  still  in  the  war,  any  practical  effort 
at  unity  was  defeated  by  that  alliance  of  intrigue 
between  Berlin  and  Russian  court  circles,  which  put 
all  suggestions  embodying  plans  for  operations  on 
the  Western  front  at  the  disposal  of  the  German 
Staff.  With  the  war  restricted  to  the  West,  the 
line  from  the  Adriatic  to  the  North  Sea  could  be 
considered  as  one  line.  It  was  to  take  still  another 
serious   setback  to  our  arms  to  establish   for  the 


PULLING  UPSTREAM  151 

Allies  real  unity  of  command,  which  Germany  had 
from  the  start  of  the  war  from  her  Imperial  Master. 
We  must  wait  on  our  publics,  which  are  our  masters. 

The  thought  of  the  American  army  driven  home 
at  the  Inter-allied  Conference  was  ships,  ships  and 
more  ships  to  bring  troops  and  supplies.  There 
was  no  use  in  bringing  the  one  unless  you  brought 
the  other.  Ships  wherever  they  could  be  procured, 
from  all  the  seas  of  the  world!  Any  ship  lying 
unnecessarily  idle  in  any  port,  every  hour's  delay  in 
the  turn-around  of  our  transports,  was  serving  the 
enemy.  We  would  not  believe  that  there  were  not 
ships  available  for  our  uses. 

The  one  office  to  which  no  subordinate  must  bring 
any  word  of  pessimism  was  that  of  the  C.-in-C. 
He  had  no  patience  with  the  phrase  "  It  can't  be 
done !  "  or  with  any  statistician  who  figured  out 
tonnage  assets  and  submarine  losses  to  prove  the 
impossibility  of  transporting  and"  supplying  a  great 
army  across  the  Atlantic.  The  submarine  could  and 
would  be  conquered.  We  could  build  enough  ships 
to  bridge  the  Atlantic  for  five  million  men  if  need 
be  and  for  artillery  and  ammunition  without  limit. 
The  worse  the  news  the  firmer  he  set  his  faith  in 
the  future — if  we  worked  and  fought.  He  believed 
in  his  army,  in  his  country  and  its  cause  and  an 
unconquerable  force.  When  the  Allies  began  to  won- 
der if  our  resources  would  ever  materialize  in  a 
powerful  military  force  against  the  enemy,  his 
vigorous,  vital  personal  influence  had  its  effect  upon 
other  generals  than  our  own.  The  ships  would  be 
built;  the  divisions  from  our  training  camps  would 
come. 


152  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

The  army  in  France  was  making  ready  to  do  its 
part.  If  the  nation  would  only  build  the  bridge 
we  knew  how  we  should  use  the  men  and  the  ma- 
terial. We  were  making  ready  in  more  than  the 
blue  print  plans,  in  more  than  construction  work; 
making  ready  to  command  and  organize  the  mil- 
lions. The  organization  of  our  school  system  which 
was  to  prepare  officers  to  direct  our  divisions  had 
been  going  on  at  the  same  time  as  the  training  of 
the  divisions  and  the  building  of  docks  and  yards. 
Both  regular  and  reserve  officers  were  going  to  the 
Staff  College  of  the  A.  E.  F.,  where  instruction  was 
hardly  in  the  liberal  arts  which  have  precious  little 
to  do  with  "  going  over  the  top."  An  ex-secretary 
of  war  and  men  prominent  in  the  business  world 
found  themselves  sitting  again  at  schoolroom  desks 
and  taking  books  and  maps  home  to  cram  up  for  the 
next  day's  lessons.  They  were  set  problems,  under 
veteran  French  and  British  officers,  in  the  movement 
of  troops  from  one  billeting  area  to  another  or  to 
the  front  lines,  and  in  their  rationing,  in  sudden 
emergencies  in  battle,  in  how  to  dispose  of  artillery 
fire  in  battle,  in  drawing  up  plans  for  attacks  and 
counter-attacks. 

"  Doping  the  black  stripe  "  it  was  called ;  for  one 
day  the  reserve  officer  students  might  wear  the  black 
stripe  of  the  General  Staff  on  their  arms,  if  in  the 
post-graduate  course  on  division  staffs  they  kept 
up  their  record  as  pupils.  They  studied  until  their 
brains  were  rattling  machine-gun  nests  under  a  com- 
bined concentration  of  gas  and  high-explosive  shells. 
They  vied  with  one  another  for  good  marks  in  reci- 
tations and  papers.    You  heard  side  remarks  about 


PULLING  UPSTREAM  153 

some  major,  who  was  the  father  of  a  family  at 
home,  being  the  "  white-haired  boy  "  to  the  school 
commander.  Men  who  had  supposed  that  all  there 
was  in  transferring  a  division  from  one  sector  to 
another  was  to  order  it  on  board  a  train  and  then 
march  it  to  its  destination,  screwed  their  brows  far 
into  the  night  over  details  that  would  keep  that 
division  from  being  tied  into  knots.  When  gradua- 
tion exercises  came  there  were  no  commencement 
balls  or  parades.  The  graduates  were  given  their 
orders  where  to  go,  and  they  went. 

Other  schools  were  busy  at  the  same  time:  the 
aviation  schools  turning  out  aviators,  though  no 
planes  were  arriving;  a  tank  school  where  there  were 
just  enough  tanks  for  practice;  signal  schools;  artil- 
lery schools,  and  corps  schools,  where  an  ambitious 
sergeant  might  learn  everything  which  he  would 
require  to  know  as  an  officer  of  the  line;  not  to 
mention  the  pigeon  schools,  where  we  were  breed- 
ing pigeons  for  messenger  service  with  a  rapidity 
which  proved  that  in  this  branch,  at  least.  Nature 
would  soon  make  up  the  deficiencies  due  to  unpre- 
paredness.  We  had  pigeon  fancier  officers  as  well 
as  more  and  more  officers  in  all  kinds  of  specialties, 
arriving  and  being  instructed  for  future  usefulness 
against  the  arrival  of  that  first  million  men.  With- 
out the  million  they  would  be  like  lawyers  who 
never  practiced  after  admission  to  the  bar. 

Our  career  as  an  army,  all  our  desires,  were  ex- 
pressed in  that  one  word  ships,  to  bring  the  million 
and  then  the  millions  which  we  knew  were  the  one 
convincing  argument  to  the  Kaiser.  Each  new- 
comer from  home  was  plied  with  questions  about 


154  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

what  they  were  doing  "  over  there,"  our  "  over 
there  "  being  home.  Yet  inquiry  was  not  necessary. 
By  some  instinct  the  mood  of  our  people  seemed  to 
be  in  our  minds.  They  were  with  us,  oh,  yes !  But, 
how  with  us?  We  looked  to  them  for  our  inspira- 
tion, our  impulse.  They  could  make  the  current 
which  would  force  us  to  pull  hard  upstream  or  the 
current  that  ran  our  way.  Private  letters  about 
what  a  community  was  thinking  and  doing  were  a 
revelation  of  what  might  be  the  state  of  mind  of 
the  nation;  and  in  those  winter  days  we  felt  that 
we  were  pulling  upstream. 


XIII 

THE   OTHER   "  OVER  THERE 


«'     r^XTT^-n        ri^TTT>T.T^     '» 


Leave  to  go  home — Transformation  of  a  German  steamship — The 
Leviathan  passes  with  ten  thousand  passengers  aboard — A 
different  America — An  undisciplined  people  respond  to 
authority — The  author  discovers  a  new  type  of  American — 
The  faith  of  a  democracy — The  man  in  Washington  who 
could  take  time  to  think — The  rush  of  "  helpers "  to  Wash- 
ington— ^An  impossible  programme  attacked  with  American 
energy. 

Yes,  the  decision  was  with  America.  My  emotions, 
when  I  had  word  that  I  was  to  go  home  for  a  brief 
midwinter  trip,  were  very  different  from  those  when 
I  had  set  out  from  the  front  in  France  on  the  same 
journey  in  19 15  and  19 16.  The  thought  of  seeing 
friends  and  family  and  my  own  country,  which 
kindle  livelier  and  more  heartfelt  anticipations  the 
more  I  travel,  were  now  incidental  to  the  vital  curi- 
osity of  any  returning  member  of  the  A.  E.  F.,  who 
sought  through  his  own  observation  an  answer  to 
the  question,  "Were  we  to  win  the  war  or  not?" 
which  had  become  supremely  personal  to  all  men. 

It  was  enlightening  to  be  on  board  the  transport 
Mount  Vernon,  formerly  the  Kronprinzessin  Cecilie. 
She  had  brought  four  thousand  soldiers  to  France 
and  would  bring  four  thousand  more  on  the  next 
outward  voyage.  It  was  good  to  see  the  young 
recruits  who  formed  the  crew.     Supple  and  rollick- 

155 


156  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ing  in  their  sailor  jackets,  they  had  already  absorbed 
the  ways  of  the  sea.  There  were  more  where  they 
came  from  in  that  great  country  of  ours,  to  man 
other  ships;  and  there  were  more  reserve  officers  to 
stand  watch  after  they  were  trained  by  such  regular 
officers  as  the  captain  and  his  first  lieutenant. 

They  gave  the  Mount  Vernon  as  many  knots  an 
hour  as  she  had  ever  made  with  tourists  lounging 
on  her  decks  in  the  days  when  no  stretch  of  thei 
imagination  would  have  conceived  that  the  floating 
hotel,  which  sent  its  lights  gleaming  over  the  sea, 
would  become  a  gliding  shadow  bearing  some  of 
those  same  tourist  Americans  to  Europe,  to  fight 
against  the  armies  of  the  husband  of  the  same 
Hohenzollern  Princess  for  whom  the  ship"  was 
named. 

Her  old  German  captain  and  his  experienced 
sailormen  would  not  have  thought  it  possible  that 
their  places  could  have  been  taken  by  landlubbers 
after  a  few  months'  training;  or  that  the  soldiers  of 
a  few  months  training  whom  those  landlubbers  saw 
safely  in  France  would  overwhelm  the  best  Ger- 
man divisions.  Such  is  American  adaptability  to  any 
new  environment,  such  the  different  character  of  the 
training  which  makes  a  soldier  and  a  sailor,  that  it 
was  difficult  to  think  of  the  men  of  the  army  and 
the  navy  as  coming  from  the  same  class  of  youth; 
but  any  illusions  to  the  contrary  passed  when  the 
bluejackets  of  the  crew,  gathered  on  the  floor  of 
the  steamer's  great  dining-room,  greeted  the  mo- 
tion picture  reels  with  the  same  remarks  about  the 
romantic  comedy  guy  when  he  was  about  to  kiss 
the  romantic  comedy  lady  that  you  heard  from  a 


THE  OTHER  "OVER  THERE"   157 

soldier  audience  in  a  village  in  France.  Quietly  the 
navy  went  about  its  routine.  Unheralded  its  de- 
stroyers swept  the  seas.  The  navy  is  the  navy, 
modest,  yet  sure  of  itself  and  its  traditions.  But 
would  the  country  give  it  enough  transports  and  in 
time  ?  It  took  the  Mount  Vernon  a.  month  to  make 
a  turn-around. 

Off  Sandy  Hook  a  form  that  seemed  like  some 
gigantic  headland,  too  vast  for  a  ship,  loomed  out 
of  the  coastal  winter  mist.  It  was  the  Leviathan, 
formerly  the  German  Vaterland,  bound  on  her  first 
trip  across  the  Atlantic  as  an  American  troopship. 
I  know  of  no  sight  that  could  be  more  pleasing  than 
this  to  a  member  of  the  A.  E.  F.  on  board  the  former 
Kronprinzessin  Cecilie,  and  none  more  displeasing 
to  German  shipping  interests.  It  had  taken  time 
to  overhaul  her,  and  trial  trips  were  necessary  with 
her  repaired  engines,  before  she  might  be  intrusted 
to  ferry  ten  thousand  men  across  the  Atlantic;  but 
there  she  was,  ready  for  business.  Only  there  were 
not  enough  Leviathans.    We  needed  a  score. 

When  I  was  home  from  the  war  in  the  winter  of 
1915-16  and  again  in  1916-17,  I  had  been  sensible 
of  the  contrast,  so  often  remarked,  between  dark- 
ened London  and  New  York  blazing  with  lights, 
between  Europe  in  its  sacrifice  and  grief,  nerves  and 
muscles  taut  with  prolonged  effort,  and  America  in 
her  prosperity  seeing  the  war  as  some  distant  and 
horrible  spectacle.  What  would  it  be  like  now  after 
it  had  been  our  war  for  over  eight  months?  Life 
in  the  streets  seemed  much  the  same  except  for  the 
presence  of  men  in  uniform.  But  the  atmosphere 
was  different,  very  tangibly  different.     Display  had 


158  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

passed.  Money  had  lost  Its  Influence.  Men  con- 
cealed their  enjoyment  of  the  luxuries  It  provided. 
The  talk  about  markets  had  changed  to  talk  about 
service. 

It  was  not  a  question  of  how  much  Income  you 
were  earning  or  what  distinction  In  your  profession 
you  were  gaining,  but  what  sacrifice  you  were  mak- 
ing, that  counted  In  winning  the  good  opinion  of 
your  fellows.  The  man  who  had  not  a  government 
position  or  was  not  In  "  war  work  "  of  some  kind 
was  as  much  "  out  of  it "  as  he  would  have  been  In 
the  old  days  If  he  had  not  owned  an  automobile. 
A  woman  who  had  been  worried  about  the  choice 
of  doctors  for  her  ailing  pet  dog  during  the  critical 
period  of  the  drive  against  Verdun,  while  we  were 
still  neutral,  now  expressed  her  misery  by  saying  that 
she  seemed  perfectly  "  useless  " ;  and  the  woman  who 
had  told  me  In  19 16  that  she  had  never  kept  up  her 
interest  In  anything  so  long  as  in  this  war  had  a 
son  at  a  training  camp  who  would  keep  up  her  inter- 
est for  the  duration  of  hostilities.  The  service  stars 
in  the  flags  In  the  windows  of  houses  and  on  the  but- 
tons that  people  wore  were  a  new  form  of  social 
distinction,  which  Mrs.  Goldstein  of  Avenue  A  and 
Mrs.  Bertelll  of  Rivlngton  Street  shared  with  the 
hostesses  of  Fifth  Avenue. 

"  Make  It  the  thing  to  do  "  In  our  democracy 
and  we  need  no  law.  It  was  the  thing  to  do  to 
ride  in  day  coaches  and  to  get  along  with  fewer 
passenger  trains  and  fewer  servants.  Though  we 
had  been  characterized  as  an  undisciplined  people 
we  responded  to  authority.  When  the  Fuel  Admin- 
istrator issued  his  drastic  order  closing  factories  and 


THE  OTHER  "  OVER  THERE  "      159 

offices  for  five  days  to  save  coal,  this  invasion  of 
the  rights  of  business,  which  were  supposed  to  be 
sacred  to  us,  was  received  with  the  practical  thought: 
"  Garfield  did  not  do  this  to  be  mean;  he  had  rea- 
sons " — which  were  the  figures  that  the  officer  had 
written  on  the  pad  for  me  driven  dagger-edged  into 
Allied  conferences  and  Allied  governments. 

We  had  not  felt  the  pinch  of  war  yet  and  we  were 
not  in  the  war  yet,  in  the  European  sense.  This 
was  not  surprising.  Should  the  cotton  fields,  the 
prairies,  the  gardens  of  the  Pacific  coast,  feel  the 
war  as  England  and  France  felt  it?  After  that 
voyage  of  three  thousand  miles  across  the  Atlantic, 
which  isolated  us  from  the  struggle,  I  was  amazed, 
in  one  sense,  that  we  should  be  taking  any  part  in 
the  war.  It  was  easy  to  understand  how  the  House 
of  Hohenzollern,  by  the  logic  that  built  its  fortunes, 
could  not  conceiveit  possible  that  we  practical  Amer- 
icans, when  we  were  secure  on  our  continent,  should 
offer  our  blood  in  earnest  for  any  European  cause. 

I  stood  in  awe  of  the  woman  on  a  remote  Western 
farm  and  of  the  woman  in  a  tenement  who  were 
obeying  the  food  rules,  and  of  the  sentiment  that 
accepted  the  National  Draft  without  complaint. 
Transpose  situations  and  consider  Lorraine  in 
France  or  the  county  of  Dorset  in  England  aroused 
to  help  Kansas  defend  herself  from  Prussianism ! 

It  was  only  natural  that  we  should  still  visualize 
the  resources  of  our  country  as  man-power  which 
must  bring  the  Germans  to  terms;  and  the  con- 
viction that  the  mere  fact  of  our  entry  into  the  war 
would  turn  the  scale  of  victory  still  lingered  in  some 
minds.    We  were  like  all  people  in  wanting  to  hear 


i6o  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

good  news.  Hadn't  that  German  offensive  been 
over-advertised?  Wasn't  it  German  bluff  ?  Weren't 
the  Allied  reports  about  superior  German  forces  on 
the  Western  front  given  out  with  a  view  to  "  throw- 
ing a  scare  into  us "  and  arousing  us  to  sterner 
efforts?  How  could  the  Germans  gather  such  great 
numbers  after  they  had  been  fighting  for  three  years 
and  suffering  such  tremendous  losses  as  had  been 
reported? 

If  you  said  that  you  thought  the  offensive  was 
coming;  that  the  German  Staff,  which  was  not  given 
to  quixotic  military  adventures,  was  going  to  try 
for  a  military  decision;  that  the  wickedest  and  most 
powerful  military  machine  on  earth  could  really 
bring  thirty  per  cent  of  superiority  to  bear  now  that 
Russia  was  out  of  the  war,  you  might  be  indicted 
as  a  pessimist  in  some  quarters,  not  to  mention  that 
your  appreciation  of  German  strength  might  be  mis- 
taken for  faint-heartedness. 

Besides,  we  could  not  yet  consider  Russia  out  of 
it.  Russia  had  turned  to  democracy.  Our  faith  in 
Russia  was  that  of  democracy's  loyalty  to  democ- 
racy. We  thought  of  Russia  as  a  body  of  human 
beings  like  ourselves.  There  would  be  a  period  of 
disorder,  but  order  would  come,  as  a  matter  of  neces- 
sary evolution.  Russia  would  find  itself.  Trotzky 
with  his  socialism,  defying  the  German  Staff  at  the 
Brest-Litovsk  Peace  Conference,  appealed  to  our 
sentiment  and  pleased  our  sporting  instinct,  which 
likes  to  see  the  little  bow-legged  outsider  walk  in  and 
beat  the  bully. 

If  Trotzky's  propaganda  spread  in  Germany  and 
the  German  people  rose  in  their  might  and  over- 


THE  OTHER  "OVER  THERE"   i6i 

threw  militarism,  wasn't  that  what  we  were  fighting 
for?  Although  Germany's  apparent  embarrassment 
by  Trotzkyism  for  a  time  did  not  deter  the  War 
Department  or  the  A.  E.  F.  in  its  preparations  by 
one  iota,  it  may  have  served  the  purpose  of  the  Ger- 
man Staff  in  lulling  our  people  with  false  visions. 
Our  faith  in  Russia  did  not  die  even  with  Trotzky's 
surrender  to  Hoffmann;  or  even  with  reports  that 
presented  him  as  a  pitiful  buffoon,  or  a  shark  of 
cupidity.  There  was  something  fine  in  our  faith; 
which  was  the  faith  of  democracy  in  keeping  with 
the  principles  that  had  brought  us  into  the  war. 

If  you  had  come  home  from  the  A.  E.  F.  with  a 
mission  to  arouse  people  to  action  you  found  that 
everybody  you  met  had  the  same  mission.  All  who 
were  not  in  war  work,  as  I  have  said,  were  trying 
to  get  into  war  work.  If  they  could  not,  they  urged 
more  action;  or  they  were  a  little  weary  of  hearing 
action  urged  when  they  were  doing  their  bit. 

"  You  say  we  aren't  awake  to  the  war,"  said  one 
of  my  friends.  "  I've  been  working  on  a  draft  board 
and  worn  out  my  shoe  leather  going  around  to 
volunteer  for  other  things.  My  wife  is  making 
bandages,  my  daughter  is  getting  Red  Cross  mem- 
berships, my  only  son  is  in  the  army  and  we're  doing 
all  the  foodless,  fuelless  day  stunts.  What  else? 
Shall  I  do  a  clothesless  day  and  get  arrested;  or 
stand  on  the  drorstep  beating  a  drum?  Don't  say 
coordination  lo  me !  I'll  coordinate  with  anybody 
or  anything;  only  when  I  do,  I'm  told  that  it's  not 
coordination." 

The  noise  of  the  war  machinery  was  incessant, 
thunderous,  not  to  mention  discordant  as  the  ma- 


1 62  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

chinery  was  new.  The  only  calm  place  in  Washing- 
ton, where  all  action  centered,  was  the  White  House. 
A  glance  over  the  fence  across  the  grounds  at  the 
white  pillars,  as  you  passed  from  one  bustling  office 
to  another,  had  a  quieting  effect  on  an  overworked 
nervous  system  which  resolved  faculties  into  some- 
thing like  orderly  concentration.  The  man  in  there 
was  apparently  looking  out  of  the  windows  all  over 
the  country  and  all  over  Europe,  and  seeing  the 
whole  simply  in  the  movement  of  great  forces  that' 
must  be  directed  by  someone  who  took  time  to  think. 
That  he  of  all  men  could  take  time  to  think  was  the 
most  wonderful  thing  about  Washington  in  the  win- 
ter of  1917-18. 

Our  effort  in  America,  as  in  France,  was  in  the 
first  period  of  reaction  from  the  great  promise  of 
the  early  days  of  our  entry  into  the  war.  Critics 
said  that  we  had  no  programme.  Personally,  I 
thought  that  we  had  a  very  good  one  in  the  Na- 
tional Draft,  in  leaving  war  to  the  experts,  in  an- 
swering France's  call  for  some  kind  of  troops,  in 
building  ships  and  immense  numbers  of  aeroplanes 
and  in  manufacturing  great  quantities  of  munitions. 
How  were  we  carrying  out  the  programme  ?  Prob- 
ably we  had  aimed  to  do  too  much  along  too  many 
lines.  Organizers  had  not  been  able  to  bring  accom- 
plishment up  to  expectation  for  this  very  reason, 
which  was  inevitable  to  the  tremendous  application 
of  our  national  energy  through  governmental  chan- 
nels, when,  previously,  the  average  man's  most  inti- 
mate relation  with  the  government  had  been  through 
the  post  office,  and  we  had  had  no  experience  in  our 
time  in  a  great  military  organization.      Suddenly 


THE  OTHER  "OVER  THERE"   163 

we  all  wanted  to  go  into  the  government;  we  all 
wanted  to  help  the  government  deal  with  its  great 
problem.  The  resultant  pressure  on  those  who  were 
trying  to  direct  our  energy  was  something  that  only 
administrators  who  had  characteristic  national  en- 
durance could  have  borne.  Washington  was  "  mill- 
ing," as  the  cattlemen  say.  In  France,  we  had  the 
advantage  of  not  having  so  many  advisers  on  the 
side  lines  who  wanted  to  rush  on  the  field  and  kick 
a  goal  or  make  a  "  forward  pass." 

If  you  took  up  a  position  in  a  Washington  hotel 
lobby  and  listened  to  the  knowing  whispers  of  pes- 
simism and  the  complaints  of  men  who  had  not 
been  given  a  chance  to  show  how  things  should  be 
done,  you  might  be  fully  convinced  that  the  war  was 
lost  unless  a  lean,  upstanding  young  officer  or  soldier 
who  had  been  at  one  of  the  training  camps  hap- 
pened to  appear.  He  made  all  middle-aged  reserve 
majors  seem  superfluous  adipose.  He  was  a  re- 
minder that  at  the  camps  the  greatest  of  all  the  war 
industries  was  proceeding — the  making  of  soldiers. 
They  were  being  trained  according  to  sound  prin- 
ciples. Would  they  be  in  France  in  time?  Would 
there  be  ships  to  transport  them? 

There  was  much  talk  of  the  unprecedented  powers 
which  Congress  had  given  to  the  President,  but  the 
real  dictator  in  our  country  is  the  people.  Theirs 
is  an  irresistible,  prodigious,  terrific  power.  When 
nine  out  of  ten  Americans  think  alike  on  any  sub- 
ject, when  from  coast  to  coast  they  say  that  a  thing 
must  be  done,  it  is  done.  We  were  thinking  to- 
gether magnificently,  amazingly,  in  our  unity  of 
patriotism  and  in  the  desire  of  every  citizen  to  do 


i64  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  right  thing  to  win  the  war;  thinking  together 
in  the  continued  pressure  that  more  should  be  done, 
complaining  and  grumbling  somewhat,  but  always 
working. 

We  had  concentrated  upon  most  of  the  other 
items  of  our  programme,  including  Liberty  Loan 
and  Red  Cross,  but  as  yet  we  had  not  taken  up  the 
subject  of  ships  in  the  committee  of  the  whole  of 
the  hundred  million.  At  least  fifty  per  cent  of  our 
people  had  never  seen  salt  water.  We  were  all 
experts  in  railroads,  but  ships  had  never  interested 
us.  If  you  mentioned  ships,  critics  might  say: 
"  Yes,  that's  another  thing — our  ship-building  pro- 
gramme is  going  badly.  My  idea  is  to  get  down  to 
war  bread  at  once.  When  are  we  going  to  make 
any  machine  guns?  " 

One  day  we  would  take  up  the  subject;  and  when 
we  did  there  would  be  complaints  about  riveters 
driving  half  the  customary  number  of  rivets  in  a 
day.  They  would  have  the  edict  from  the  American 
Czar.  A  hundred  million  forefingers  would  be  point- 
ing at  them,  a  hundred  million  pairs  of  eyes  cen- 
soring their  efforts,  a  hundred  million  voices  dinning 
an  urgent  chorus  in  their  ears.  Yet  shipyards  were 
assuming  form,  while  the  other  parts  of  the  pro- 
gramme were  progressing,  only  results  did  not  yet 
measure  up  to  the  impossible  standard  of  accom- 
plishment which  American  ambition  had  set. 

The  fact  was  that  the  national  mind  was  still 
largely  concentrated  within  our  own  borders  on 
home  preparations.  Everyone  knew  of  someone 
who  had  the  luck  to  be  in  France,  but  our  hearts 
were  not  In  France  when  those  in  France  were  not 


THE  OTHER  "OVER  THERE"   165 

yet  fighting.  Our  hearts  were  in  the  training  camps 
where  our  sons  were;  and  our  hearts  would  move 
to  France  when  our  sons  moved  to  France  by  the 
million,  and  suspense  waited  on  the  dread  word 
from  the  War  Department  when  a  great  battle  was 
being  waged  and  casualty  lists  in  the  papers  were 
being  scanned,  to  the  exclusion  of  other  news,  to  see 
if  they  carried  the  name  of  anyone  you  knew. 

Then  Germany  would  be  cured  of  any  illusion 
that  we  were  not  in  the  war  in  earnest;  then  our 
people  would  be  ready  for  every  sacrifice  with  their 
minds  concentrated  on  the  front  in  France,  demand- 
ing, with  a  ruthlessness  which  swept  all  other  inter- 
ests aside,  that  all  the  power  of  the  nation  should 
be  directed  to  the  processes  of  destroying  the  enemy. 
Everything  was  working  out  in  our  American  way — 
our  prodigious,  energetic  way.  But  would  it  work 
out  in  time?  Would  Hindenburg  and  Ludendorff 
be  able  to  win  a  decision  before  we  could  bring  our 
force  to  bear  in  France? 


XIV 

THE   SECRETARY   COMES 


A  very  important  visitor  reaches  Paris — Our  plans  become  reali- 
ties— Visit  to  a  great  base  port — Vast  docks  and  immense 
warehouses — iA  ten-thousand-bed  hospital — A  huge  supply 
depot  for  the  A.  E.  F. — Cobwebs  of  American  tracks  all  over 
France — An  immense  aviation  camp^America  transported  to 
France — Thrifty  French  and  cool  British  wonder  at  us — Secre- 
tary Baker  visits  the  General  Staff — And  goes  into  the 
trenches — Sees  young  men  from  Iowa  in  front  of  "  No  Man's 
Land  " — A  review  that  would  have  thrilled  a  man  of  mud. 


At  six-thirty  on  a  dull  morning  early  in  March,  a 
little  man  in  a  derby  hat  and  sack  coat  alighted 
from  a  sleeper  at  the  Montparnasse  Station  in  Paris, 
where  he  was  received  by  representatives  of  the 
French  government  and  the  only  two  officers  of  our 
army  who  were  then  entitled  to  wear  four  stars  on 
their  shoulders,  Generals  Pershing  and  Bliss.  The 
presence  of  photographers  with  their  flashlights 
while  reporters  pumped  questions  at  him,  and  the 
fact  that  he  did  not  have  to  hunt  for  a  taxicab  but 
was  whisked  away  in  General  Pershing's  automobile, 
were  further  indications  that  he  had  more  to  do 
with  the  war  than  the  average  traveler  who  was 
not  in  uniform.  Being  Secretary  of  War  of  the 
United  States,  he  was  the  most  important  visitor 
that  we  could  send  to  Europe,  with  the  single  excep- 
tion of  the  President  of  the  United  States. 

l66 


THE  SECRETARY  COMES  167 

He  had  long  wanted  to  come  and  he  had  long 
been  urged  to  come.  But  there  was  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  to  consider  again.  If  he  were  to  spend 
enough  time  in  Europe  to  be  worth  the  long  voy- 
age, it  meant  that  he  must  be  away  from  his  desk 
in  Washington  from  four  to  six  weeks. 

After  he  had  his  breakfast  he  put  on  the  silk  hat 
of  democratic  officialdom,  and  set  out  to  pay  official 
calls;  and  after  two  days  of  conference  with  the 
War  Council  at  Versailles,  and  of  meeting  the  lead- 
ers with  whom  as  a  leader  he  cooperated,  he  was  to 
see  with  his  own  eyes  what  this  A.  E.  F.,  with  its 
insatiable  hunger  for  personnel  and  supplies,  had 
accomplished. 

There  was  something  to  show  him  now  without 
calling  on  his  imagination.  The  transformation  in 
the  projects  of  the  bases  and  lines  of  communication 
during  the  winter  had  been  marvelous.  Blue  prints 
of  structures  that  had  been  planned  eight  months 
ago  were  pasted  on  the  walls  of  structures  finished. 
As  a  motion  picture  man  said,  the  A.  E.  F.  was  at 
last  on  a  motion  picture  basis,  with  subjects  which 
would  bring  visual  conviction  on  the  "  movie  runs." 
All  the  scattered  points  of  our  effort  had  realized 
tangible  results  within  the  last  two  months.  I 
thought  of  them  connected  in  one  immense  photo- 
graph made  by  a  camera  that  had  all  France  in  its 
focus. 

Organization,  which  had  begun  with  potentiali- 
ties, had  more  and  more  to  consider  rapidly  ex- 
panding realities.  New  divisions  and  subdivisions  of 
administration  were  required  for  the  decentraliza- 
tion of  detail  and  the  centralization  of  delegated 


1 68  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

authority.  The  General  Staff  system,  which  had  had 
such  an  emergency  in  view,  now  weaned  the  business 
of  the  bases  and  the  lines  of  communication  and 
set  it  up  in  a  house  by  itself.  There  was  a  hegira 
of  chief  of  the  signal  corps,  chief  quartermaster, 
chief  engineer  and  surgeon  general  and  all  their 
subordinates  and  clerks  to  Tours,  which  became  the 
headquarters  of  the  new  Service  of  Supply,  with  its 
own  commanding  general  in  a  sub-icingdom  respon- 
sible for  all  construction  and  supply. 

As  the  Secretary  had  seen  our  ports  on  our  At- 
lantic seaboard,  and  as  he  had  crossed  the  Atlantic 
with  a  convoy  of  troops  landing  at  a  naval  base,  the 
next  step  in  a  tour  which  was  to  follow  the  soldier 
and  his  cartridges  to  the  trenches  was  a  visit  to  one 
of  the  great  base  ports  of  the  S.  O.  S.  No  tourist 
who  ever  did  Europe  in  a  hurry  in  the  old  days 
ever  saw  more  than  he  saw  in  a  given  time.  Tour- 
ists used  to  come — how  long  ago  it  seems! — to  see 
cathedrals  and  art  galleries  and  old  cities  and  his- 
torical landmarks,  though  some,  according  to  re- 
ports, missed  a  few  cathedrals  because  they  stopped 
such  a  long  time  on  the  boulevards.  The  Secretary 
was  to  be  shown  corrugated  iron  roofs  rising  in  sight 
of  cathedrals,  and  barracks,  machine  shops  and  sheds 
neighbors  to  villages  under  red  roofs  with  walls 
softened  by  the  tone  of  time. 

As  he  alighted  from  an  automobile  beyond  a  city's 
suburbs  by  an  arm  of  the  sea,  the  scene  of  the  effort 
before  him  might  have  been  the  Panama  Canal  in 
Stevens'  or  Goethal's  day,  or  the  Croton  aqueduct, 
the  Salt  Lake  cut-off,  or  any  similar  project  in  the 
course  of  construction  where  steam  shovels  nod  to 


THE  SECRETARY  COMES  169 

cranes,  cement  is  being  mixed  and  structural  ma- 
terial unloaded  from  flat  cars,  and  engineer  and 
contractor  and  labor  and  machinery  are  making  a 
monument  to  man's  energy  which  will  serve  man. 
The  workers  might  be  in  uniform,  but  they  would 
make  no  claims  to  being  military.  They  were  as 
American  and  working  in  as  American  a  way  as  if 
they  were  in  the  middle  of  the  United  States. 

The  only  evidence  that  you  were  in  France  was 
the  architecture  of  the  buildings  in  the  distance. 
Those  finished,  great  cement  quays  imposed  and  the 
unfinished  being  imposed  on  the  soft  bank  of  the 
water's  edge,  with  a  permanency  which  might  indi- 
cate that  we  expected  the  war  to  last  a  hundred 
years,  were  an  invitation  to  France  to  expand  her 
commerce  after  the  war  in  order  to  keep  them  from 
remaining  idle.  Great  warehouses  and  more  spur 
tracks  were  being  built  and  all  the  appliances  were 
coming  to  unload  ships,  with  the  labor-saving  facility 
which  is  our  national  habit. 

In  the  piles  of  cargo  landed  here,  as  at  the  other 
port  which  he  visited,  that  keen,  inquiring,  well- 
poised  little  man  might  see  materialized  the  requisi- 
tions in  the  long  cablegrams  for  the  monthly  routine 
supplies  and  other  requisitions  for  building  anything 
from  a  barrack  to  a  salvage  depot.  As  an  officer 
had  said  in  the  early  days  of  the  expedition,  "  Why 
not  ask  Washington  to  read  the  tariff  and  free-list 
schedules  and  ship  everything  on  both  lists,  just  as 
a  starter?  " 

At  the  other  port,  a  flat  car  was  fitted  up  as  a 
seeing-the-S.-O.-S.  car.  As  it  ran  out  over  a  spur 
track  across  swampy  land,   workers  looked  up  to 


170  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

see  a  man  in  civilian  clothes  alternately  glancing  at 
a  blue  print  and  at  his  surroundings  and  exclaimed : 
"  That's  Baker  and  Pershing,  too!  "  which  was  the 
personification  of  a  good  deal  of  official  authority 
to  them.  There  were  more  warehouses  to  be  seen, 
of  course.  One  where  the  contract  workers  were 
hoisting  a  girder  into  position  would  be  finished  in  a 
week;  the  other,  with  the  supports  just  set  in  the 
cement  foundations,  in  two  weeks.  Both  were  in  an 
isolated  location.  Neighbors  did  not  crave  their 
company,  as  they  were  to  store  explosives  enough 
for  a  great  offensive.  And  there  were  piers  built 
and  piers  under  way  and  sites  for  piers  to  be  pointed 
out.  The  Secretary  might  also  look  over  a  ten-thou- 
sand-bed hospital  under  construction,  rest  camps  for 
arriving  soldiers,  laborers'  barracks  and  a  shop  for 
assembling  locomotives,  though  soon  locomotives 
themselves  were  to  be  brought  over  on  ships  spe- 
cially constructed  for  such  little  details  of  transport, 
and  swung  onto  the  trucks  from  the  hold  by  giant 
cranes  all  ready  for  business. 

It  was  not  the  intention  of  his  conductors  that 
Mr.  Baker  should  have  any  time  on  his  trip  to  go 
fishing.  Every  officer  with  a  separate  command 
wanted  to  take  part  in  the  education  of  a  Secretary 
of  War  and  show  him  around  with  a  "  Watch-our- 
city-grow  "  enthusiasm.  There  were  still  other  ports 
where,  as  a  gang  foreman  remarked,  we  were  spend- 
ing a  few  millions  in  making  a  few  improvements 
necessary  to  conduct  the  war  in  a  manner  unsatis- 
factory to  the  enemy.  But  two  examples  sufficed 
as  illustration.  It  was  comprehensible  that  piers, 
warehouses  and  spur  tracks  characterized  base  ports 


THE  SECRETARY  COMES  171 

of  the  A.  E.  F. ;  and  comprehensible,  too,  the  im- 
mensity of  the  task  in  building  them  with  material 
shipped  across  the  Atlantic. 

Next  on  the  programme  was  the  great  depot  at 
Gievres  in  the  central  plain  of  France,  which  was 
to  be  the  principal  larder  of  the  A.  E.  F.  When 
I  had  been  there  seven  months  before  the  only  sign 
of  progress  was  a  tent  so  full  of  blue  prints  that 
there  seemed  no  room  for  the  authors  of  the  prints. 
They  talked  of  a  great  cold  storage  plant  with  all 
the  faith  of  Joshua  in  himself  after  the  sun  had 
obeyed  his  order.  The  plant  was  now  seventy  per 
cent  completed,  if  you  please,  with  its  enormous 
boilers  in  place  and  the  piping  going  into  place  in 
the  vast  building  where  the  meat  for  our  army  was 
to  be  kept  fresh.  More  spur  tracks  ran  past  the 
doors  of  the  immense  acreage  of  warehouses,  and 
one  track  went  out  across  country  to  the  site  of  still 
another  depot.  A  huge  shed  was  wholly  unoccupied 
except  by  a  few  machine  guns;  it  was  meant  to  house 
thousands  as  soon  as  they  arrived  from  America. 
Another  had  enough  small  arms  ammunition  to  per- 
forate the  whole  German  military  system  if  only 
it  would  be  accommodating  enough  to  expose  itself 
at  five  hundred  yards.  Other  sheds  were  crammed 
with  an  amount  of  food  supplies  which  indicated  that 
no  American  soldier  in  France  need  worry  about 
having  enough  to  eat  for  months  to  come. 

The  regulating  stations  far  up  the  line,  and  the 
railheads  in  the  zone  of  advance,  and  the  motor 
convoys  beyond  that,  and,  finally,  the  hungry  men 
and  guns  sent  their  requisitions  to  the  reserve  at 
Gievres,  which  kept  up  its  stock  by  requisition  on  the 


172  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ports  when  through  runs  with  consequent  economy 
in  handling  were  not  practicable.  We  were  building 
spur  tracks  all  over  France  with  the  facility  of  a 
spider  spinning  webs  in  a  meadow;  but  the  report 
that  we  were  building  a  railroad  across  France  was 
quite  untrue.  Our  mileage  was  complementary,  for 
local  purposes,  to  the  French  railroad  system,  which, 
with  its  double  and  four-track  lines,  would  have  been 
equal  to  all  demands  if  it  had  had  adequate  rolling 
stock  and  personnel. 

Along  the  first  of  the  spur  tracks  which  we  had 
built — that  from  the  railroad  station  at  Issoudun — 
had  gone  all  the  material  to  build  the  aviation  city 
which  the  Secretary  saw  in  being.  Here,  particu- 
larly, in  view  of  what  I  had  seen  in  the  previous 
August,  I  felt  like  the  old  settler  who  had  occupied 
the  shack  which  was  on  the  site  of  the  new  town 
hall  of  Boomtown.  A  city  that  had  its  own  local 
newspaper,  its  Y.  M.  C.  A.  club  room  and  its  hos- 
pital had  risen,  under  systematic  official  direction, 
with  the  rapidity  of  a  mining  camp.  It  was  a  com- 
munity by  itself,  dissociated  from  the  rest  of  the 
army,  enjoying  the  aristocratic  pride  of  a  feudal 
heritage  despite  its  newness  which  is  the  privilege 
of  all  aviation  camps,  while  its  interest  in  the  out- 
side world  centered  in  any  news  about  the  arrival 
of  the  Liberty  planes,  which  meant  that  more  pri- 
vates would  be  cadets  and  more  cadets  would  be 
lieutenants  and  more  lieutenants  would  go  to  the 
front. 

The  officer  in  command  was  the  ruling  prince, 
monarch  of  all  he  surveyed  on  earth  and  in  the  air. 
His  instructors  were  his  lords  and  all  the  students 


THE  SECRETARY  COMES  173 

of  flying,  for  whom  Issoudun  existed,  were  his 
knights,  with  the  remainder  of  the  five  thousand 
souls  housed  in  the  cluster  of  barracks  acting  as 
retainers.  All  talked  flying  and  lived  flying  and  ex- 
pressed their  ideas  in  the  jargon  of  flying;  and  in 
front  of  the  hangars  the  planes  were  marshaled  for 
an  exhibition  more  interesting  as  a  spectacle  than 
warehouses. 

It  was  the  aviators'  part  in  the  war;  the  building 
spur  tracks  and  quays  was  the  equally  important 
part  of  other  men,  with  the  sublime  part  in  heroism, 
in  endurance  and  in  character  that  of  the  soldier  of 
the  line.  For  no  ace  aviator  was  ever  worthier  of 
honor  from  his  country  than  the  young  lieutenant 
who  leads  his  men  against  a  machine-gun  nest  or 
the  private  who  springs  past  the  hot  barrel  of  a 
machine  gun  over  the  prostrate  body  of  a  comrade 
to  end  the  gunner's  work.  All  the  maneuvers  of 
acrobatic  flying  for  training  in  combat,  followed  by 
flights  in  formation,  were  shown,  with  no  malicious 
intention  of  giving  the  Secretary  of  War  and  Gen- 
eral Pershing  cricks  in  the  back  of  their  necks,  but 
as  an  earnest  promise  that  the  personnel  was  not 
wanting  to  make  another  one  of  our  great  concep- 
tions become  reality,  in  the  conquest  of  the  air  and 
the  battering  of  the  enemy  with  showers  of  ex- 
plosives from  the  heavens  when  our  aeroplane  pro- 
gramme at  home  should  materialize  in  shipments  to 
France. 

The  last  exhibit  of  the  Service  of  Supply  to  the 
foremost  of  official  visitors  was  a  regulating  station. 
He  had  missed  many  machine  shops,  hospitals,  lum- 
ber camps,  Y.  M.  C.  A.  huts,  bakeries,  laundries,  dis- 


174  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

infecting  plants,  commissary  depots,  remount  depots, 
ordnance  depots,  automobile  repair  shops,  spur  tracks 
and  warehouses  because  he  had  kept  to  the  main  lines 
of  communication,  though  the  spreading  tentacles  of 
the  S.  O.  S.  were  reaching  every  port  of  central  and 
southern  France  as  more  officers  set  out  to  establish 
new  branches  in  new  localities.  As  a  negro  steve- 
dore said,  "  I  guess  it  done  open  Mistah  Bakah's 
eyes — what  we's  doing  over  heah."  In  future,  when 
cablegrams  of  requisitions  for  the  S.  O.  S.  came  to 
the  Secretary  of  War's  desk  he  would  have  visualiza- 
tion of  our  work  in  France  as  his  counsellor. 

In  one  sense,  what  the  S.  O.  S.  had  done  was  very 
wonderful;  in  another  it  was  a  commonplace.  We 
had  simply  transported  America  to  France;  and  this 
made  the  accomplishment  wonderful  only  as  Amer- 
ica is  wonderful  and  the  Atlantic  Ocean  is  broad. 
The  energy  which  did  our  building  and  carried  on 
our  enterprises  at  home,  from  New  York's  subways 
to  the  California  oil  fields,  concentrated  on  a  great 
project  and  workers  from  hundreds  of  industries 
and  all  professions  brought  together  in  a  single  or- 
ganization, meant  a  revelation  to  ourselves  of  the 
power  that  was  in  us  as  a  whole. 

The  profession  that  was  least  needed  was  the  law. 
All  the  lawyers  who  wanted  to  come  to  France  could 
not  be  judge  advocates.  The  task  of  fitting  the  right 
man  in  the  right  place  had  been  one  of  the  besetting 
difficulties  of  the  shaking  down  process  from  the 
start.  Such  anomalies  as  a  seaman  in  charge  of  a 
mule  camp  and  a  man  who  knew  mules  acting  as 
quartermaster  on  a  transport  in  the  early  days  could 
easily  be  remedied  by  a  mutual  transfer  that  pleased 


THE  SECRETARY  COMES  175 

both  the  men  and  the  mules;  but  the  problem  of  the 
listing  of  the  occupations  of  all  officers  and  soldiers 
from  civil  life  which  should  furnish  groups  in  every 
line  of  human  skill  to  draw  upon,  though  it  might 
seem  a  matter  of  clerical  detail,  was  not  easy  of 
execution,  particularly  when  the  inclination  of  every 
man  was  to  do  something  different  from  what  he 
was  doing  at  home  before  he  went  to  war. 

A  watchful  eye  had  to  be  kept  upon  the  experts 
In  every  branch  of  construction  in  the  S.  O.  S.  lest 
their  ambition  and  enthusiasm  should  lead  them  to 
overelaborate  building,  and  lest  the  American  habit 
of  liking  to  see  business  increasing  should  lead  chiefs 
to  surround  themselves  with  too  much  personnel 
and  to  the  overlapping  of  the  activities  of  other 
departments.  An  expert  who  had  been  subject  to 
the  supervision  of  boards  of  directors  having  com- 
petition, profits  and  dividends  in  mind,  now,  with 
the  nation  in  its  prodigality  in  time  of  war  at  his 
back,  rejoiced  in  the  opportunity  of  the  young  archi- 
tect who  gets  a  carte  blanche  commission  from  a 
multimillionaire  to  build  a  house.  In  the  pride  of 
craft  and  country,  he  wanted  to  build  a  machine 
shop  that  would  last  for  fifty  years.  When  asked 
if  a  shed  would  not  serve  as  well,  his  answer  was: 
"  We  can  do  double  the  amount  of  work  with  the 
same  amount  of  personnel  by  having  things  up  to 
date."  He  was  the  expert;  his  judgment  had  to  be 
trusted;  though  when  General  Pershing  happened 
around  there  were  enthusiasts  who  found  in  him  a 
general  manager  as  obdurate  as  any  other  in  con- 
sidering his  stockholders,  the  hundred  millions. 
Thrifty  French  and  cool,  observing  British  wondered 


176  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

at  us  at  first,  and  then  began  to  consider  if  they 
had  not  fallen  into  old-fashioned  ruts  and  had  not 
lessons  to  learn  from  us  in  the  application  of  labor- 
saving  devices. 

The  tireless  workers  of  the  S.  O.  S.  were  serving 
far  away  from  the  sound  of  the  guns,  with  none  of 
the  emotional  thrills  of  war  to  relieve  their  exacting 
and  monotonous  tasks,  when  they  wanted  to  be  at 
the  front  no  less  than  other  red-blooded  men.  Your 
real  slacker  was  not  of  much  use  in  the  S.  O.  S.  or 
anywhere  else.  A  year  had  aged  many  of  the  re- 
serve officers  more  than  five  years  would  have  done 
at  home.  The  end  of  the  war  would  find  many 
exhausted  in  strength,  facing,  without  holiday  for 
recuperation,  the  problem  of  again  earning  a  living 
for  their  families  at  their  occupations,  when  the 
former  employer  might  conclude  upon  looking  them 
over  that  their  war  service  had  put  them  "  down 
and  out."  In  their  patriotism  many  sacrificed  high 
pay  for  low  pay  and  an  uncertain  future.  Others 
were  as  well  paid  as  they  had  ever  been  and  the 
government  had  not  the  best  of  the  bargain  in  their 
employment. 

To  us  in  the  zone  of  advance,  the  S.  O.  S.  was 
some  vast  mechanism  which  we  took  for  granted, 
as  the  average  city  dweller  takes  the  machinery  of 
city  existence  which  brings  his  food  or  a  cab  to  his 
door  for  granted.  In  other  words,  the  S.  O.  S.  was 
ready  for  the  million  men  in  the  spring  of  191 8. 
The  shipping  situation  was  better,  as  you  knew  by 
the  smile  of  the  tonnage  expert  at  Headquarters, 
which  was  no  longer  a  facial  mask  of  optimism,  but 
sprang  from  his  inner  being.    Through  all  the  com- 


THE  SECRETARY  COMES  177 

ing  months,  fraught  with  great  events,  the  supplies 
continued  to  come. 

It  was  a  swift  transformation  on  a  journey  of 
swift  transformations  which  took  the  Secretary  on 
the  same  day  from  a  regulating  station  across  the 
boundary  line  into  the  zone  of  advance,  where  all 
thought  was  of  fighting,  to  make  a  talk  to  the  stu- 
dent officers  of  the  Staff  school.  Later,  he  met  all 
the  officers  of  the  G.  S.  (General  Staff),  the  "  brain 
trust  "  at  Headquarters,  and  through  them  and  their 
surroundings  he  might  appreciate  the  growth  of  the 
organization  since  General  Pershing  had  begun  it  in 
the  little  room  in  the  War  Department  ten  months 
previously  and  pay  a  tribute  there,  as  he  had  at  the 
Staff  school,  to  the  soldier  who  had  worked  out  the 
plan  and  whose  leadership  had  compassed  the  execu- 
tion of  the  plan. 

Should  the  Secretary  be  taken  into  the  trenches? 
No  one  was  seeking  the  responsibility  of  any  such 
risk  to  the  person  of  such  a  high  authority.  He  set- 
tled the  matter  for  himself.  He  was  going;  and  his 
decision  presented  the  one  delicate  problem  in  show- 
ing him  the  army.  His  intention  and  the  time  of 
his  visit  and  the  point  that  he  was  to  visit  must 
be  kept  a  strict  secret,  as  there  were  a  few  thousand 
gunners  in  the  German  army  who  would  have  liked 
nothing  better  than  to  have  welcomed  him  with  every 
variety  of  shells  at  their  disposition. 

When  he  left  Headquarters  for  his  trip  to  the 
front  he  was  supposed  to  be  going  anywhere  but  to 
the  front.  En  route,  he  had  an  introduction  to  simu- 
lated war  in  watching  a  practice  attack  by  troops  in 
training,  when,  with  all  the  accessories  of  trench 


178  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

mortar  fire  and  machine-gun  barrage,  they  took 
trenches  and  bombed  a  strong  point  in  a  complete 
victory  over  the  enemy.  Then  he  was  to  see  how  all 
the  motor  trucks  and  the  wagon  trains  and  the  light 
railways  connected  up  the  trenches  with  the  S.  O.  S., 
and  for  the  first  time  he  saw  the  ruins  of  Lorraine 
villages  from  shell  fire,  ruins  which  American  troops 
were  now  defending.  He  was  to  meet  that  finished 
old  master  of  war,  that  great,  simple  French  gentle- 
man, General  Castelnau,  whose  name  had  been  asso- 
ciated with  the  defense  of  Lorraine  from  the  days  of 
August,  19 14,  when  his  brilliant  and  thorough  tactics 
held  back  the  German  onslaught.  Every  turn  of  the 
trench  line,  all  the  hills  and  valleys,  the  woods, 
the  brooks  and  bridges  at  the  front  in  Lorraine 
must  have  been  mapped  by  his  long  vigil  in 
the  mind  of  the  General,  who  was  the  grand 
patron  of  our  first  efforts;  a  kindly,  shrewd,  wise 
person. 

Now  any  visit  to  trenches  is  subject  to  the  enemy's 
mood.  The  officers  who  came  at  four-thirty  in  the 
morning  to  the  old  chateau  where  the  Secretary  had 
spent  the  night  to  conduct  him,  had  reports  of  a 
good  deal  of  artillery  activity  in  the  sector  occupied 
by  the  troops  from  his  own  State  of  Ohio,  whom 
he  wanted  to  see  in  the  line.  A  discussion  followed 
among  the  officers  as  to  the  advisability  of  taking 
him  forward  under  the  circumstances.  Finally,  the 
subject  of  all  their  solicitude  who  had  come  three 
thousand  miles  to  see  the  army,  remarked:  "Gen- 
tlemen, I  do  not  want  to  risk  your  lives !  "  and  the 
way  that  he  spoke  and  the  way  that  he  smiled  was 
not  unfamiliar  in  the  War  Department  where  su- 


THE  SECRETARY  COMES  179 

preme  authority  is  not  exerted  thunderously.  That 
ended  the  discussion. 

A  barrier  of  shell  fire  prevented  his  approaching 
the  Ohio  sector;  so  it  happened  that  he  went  into 
the  Iowa  sector,  where  his  visit  was  like  any  other 
visit,  except  that  the  division  general  who  conducted 
him  would  rather  have  gone  over  the  top  than  have 
had  to  take  the  responsibility  connected  in  his  mind 
with  the  knowledge  that  "  you  never  know  when  the 
enemy  may  decide  on  a  '  hate  '  with  his  guns."  The 
Secretary  prolonged  the  ordeal  by  talking  to  the 
soldiers  and  going  up  to  an  advanced  post  and  asking 
questions.  He  was  not  a  cabinet  member  at  that 
moment  and  he  was  seeing  what  every  other  human 
being  who  had  not  been  in  the  trenches  before 
wanted  to  see,  as  he  trod  the  duck  boards  and  peered 
into  dugouts  and  looked  over  parapets  at  a  mass 
of  barbed  wire  and  considered  the  amazing  business 
of  men  from  Iowa,  their  strong,  young  bodies 
pressed  against  the  moist  walls  to  let  him  pass,  fight- 
ing on  European  soil. 

Not  a  shell  burst  near  him  in  the  trenches;  but 
he  had  better  luck  when  he  was  back  in  the  car  and 
a  105mm.  high  explosive  saluted  him  at  a  distance 
of  twenty  yards.  He  was  quite  grateful  to  the  Ger- 
mans for  the  favor,  which  added  the  finishing  touch 
of  emotion  to  his  tour.  In  the  quiet  countryside  out 
of  the  range  of  the  guns  as  he  alighted  to  look  at  a 
little  American  cemetery  a  burial  party  was  ap- 
proaching, and  he  witnessed  the  ceremony  of  the 
burial  of  our  soldier  dead.  A  few  minutes  later, 
at  the  doorway  of  a  hospital  he  saw  the  ambu- 
lances   arriving   with    the    wounded   brought   in    in 


i8o  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  course  of  that  day's  work  of  an  American 
division. 

His  observation  of  all  that  we  were  doing  in 
France  was  completed  when  a  regiment  of  the  First 
Division  just  out  of  the  trenches  marched  past  in  the 
open  fields  upon  a  little  plateau.  This  was  a  scene 
to  thrill  a  man  of  mud.  General  Pershing,  looking 
a  keen  blade  of  war,  stood  at  the  Secretary's  side  as 
they  reviewed  the  crowning  product  of  our  effort  in 
France.  Through  his  chief,  the  General  was  giving 
an  account  of  his  stewardship  to  the  people  at  home 
in  those  firm  and  sturdy  ranks.  There  could  be  no 
denying  victory  to  the  millions  who  should  be 
formed  in  the  mold  of  these  men.  Not  one  of  them 
seemed  to  have  a  superfluous  ounce  of  weight;  not 
one  to  have  a  superfluous  ounce  of  equipment.  They 
seemed  linked  together  by  their  discipline  as  a  single 
unit  of  thought  and  action.  They  were  veterans. 
The  sign  of  their  experience  was  in  their  faces  and 
bearing:  "You  can't  show  us  anything,  O  Kaiser! 
We  know!" 

After  their  march  past,  the  field  officers  were 
assembled  to  listen  to  a  talk  by  the  Secretary.  In 
his  civilian  garb,  his  head  bared,  this  son  of  a  doctor 
in  Martinsburg,  Pa.,  who  had  been  Mayor  of  Cleve- 
land before  he  became  responsible  for  our  greatest 
war  effort,  seemed  to  express  our  democracy  and 
also  the  thought  that  as  the  agent  of  democracy  he 
gave  experts  authority  to  make  a  real  army ;  and  the 
officers,  ruddy  from  exposure,  looking  a  little  grim 
under  their  severe  steel  helmets,  ramrods'  at  atten- 
tion, eyes  ahead,  seemed  to  express  the  power  that 
was  in  that  democracy  if  it  set  its  mind  on  war  as 


THE  SECRETARY  COMES  i8i 

a  righteous  duty  under  wise,  disciplined  direction. 
After  his  talk  he  expressed  his  desire  to  meet  each 
one;  and  shook  each  one  by  the  hand  and  asked  his 
name — in  keeping  with  a  gift  for  doing  the  right 
thing  gracefully  which  comes  to  Americans  who  are 
jumped  from  mayoralties  to  directing  war  machinery. 
After  this  everybody  unbent  and  generals  and  lieu- 
tenants were  good-natured,  chatty  Americans  again. 
With  many  pictures  crowding  for  place  in  these 
pages,  this  one,  of  the  pioneers  of  our  forces  now 
trained  for  any  emergency,  had  the  significance  of 
association  with  the  end  of  the  first  phase  of  a  his- 
tory of  the  A.  E.  F.  We  were  coming  to  the  second 
phase,  action,  when  such  men  as  these  who  had 
marched  past  were  to  give  the  proof  of  the  mettle 
of  our  manhood  and  of  the  faith  that  was  in  us. 


XV 

EVERYDAY  FIGHTING 

The  New  England  Division  goes  to  a  violent  sector,  the  Cherain 
des  Dames — Our  boys  from  New  England  repulse  a  big  Ger- 
man raid  with  the  rifle — A  successful  raid  by  the  Twenty- 
sixth  Division,  the  first  of  the  National  Guard  in  the  trenches 
— The  Rainbow  Division  goes  to  the  front — The  old  Sixty- 
ninth  a  thorn  in  the  flesh  to  the  Germans — The  New  England 
troops  long  in  front  of  Saint  Mihiel — Creating  an  American 
world  in  France  and  in  the  trenches — The  "  Buffalo,"  "  Chi- 
cago "  and  "  Oskaloosa  "  trenches,  etc. — Our  troops  getting  into 
the  routine  of  war — With  spring  comes  baseball  and  optimism. 

The  emotions  of  either  the  Twenty-sixth,  the  Forty- 
second  or  the  Second  Division,  when  it  was  intro- 
duced into  the  trenches,  were  much  the  same  as 
those  of  the  First  Division,  which  I  have  described. 
Although  as  fighting  the  experience  now  seems  tame 
fundamentals  to  the  veterans  who  have  helped  drive 
the  enemy  back  from  the  Marne  salient,  the  mid- 
winter hardships  which  they  endured  will  keep  it 
ever  vivid  in  their  recollection  as  a  hardening  proc- 
ess that  fortified  them  for  stirring  action  later  on. 

It  was  for  the  French  to  choose  where  each 
division  should  be  inducted  into  the  line  and  to  re- 
peat, in  each  instance,  with  the  thoroughness  of  their 
Staff  curriculum,  their  painstaking  tutorship.  Four 
vears  of  war  had  taught  the  French  StaflF  that  even 
where  veteran  French  divisions  were  concerned,  there 
must  never  be  any  relaxation  in  the  detailed  care  of 

182 


EVERYDAY  FIGHTING  183 

making  reliefs,  which,  as  I  have  noted,  became  im- 
pressively circumspect  when  the  American  infant  was 
to  be  led  up  to  the  parapet  to  look  out  over  No 
Man's  Land  for  the  first  time. 

The  Twenty-sixth  was  particularly  an  object  of 
paternal  solicitude,  as  it  was  not  to  be  taken  into 
a  sector  of  the  Lorraine  front,  but  into  that  of  the 
Chemin  des  Dames  in  Champagne,  which  had  be- 
come a  synonym  for  violence  during  Nivelle's  of- 
fensive and  later  in  the  fierce  German  counter- 
attacks through  the  spring  of  19 17.  If,  for  the 
time  being,  it  had  quieted  down,  there  was  no  reason 
to  suppose  that  it  had  permanently  changed  its  char- 
acter, A  German  attack  was  far  more  likely  here 
than  in  Lorraine,  which  required  that  the  French 
should  keep  our  young  ambition  well  in  hand,  lest  it 
"  start  something."  The  Twenty-sixth  was  former 
National  Guard,  too,  and  the  first  territorial  organ- 
ization to  go  into  the  trenches.  For  this  reason,  it 
might  require  more  watching  than  the  First,  which 
was  regular. 

Our  New  Englanders,  very  sensitively  conscious 
of  all  warnings,  determined  to  behave  most  dis- 
creetly and  put  on  their  gas  masks  at  every  "  alert " 
and  keep  a  sharp  lookout  for  German  tricks  over 
the  sea  of  shell  craters  in  No  Man's  Land,  without 
shooting  away  their  ammunition  at  imaginary  ob- 
jects. But  they  had  an  itching  for  action  which  was 
not  altogether  due  to  the  parasites  of  the  dugouts 
which  at  once  took  bodily  hold;  and  they  were  get- 
ting well  used  to  trench  rats  when  something  hap- 
pened. 

The  Germans  attempted  a  big  raid.     Well,  what 


1 84  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

had  General  Pershing  said  about  the  rifle?  The 
New  Englanders  used  it  with  effect;  and  when  they 
were  through  they  and  their  trench  comrades  had 
completely  repulsed  the  Germans.  This  was  the 
great  historical  event  for  the  Twenty-sixth,  until  the 
French  took  some  of  them  for  something  more 
thrilling  than  creeping  out  at  night  over  the  shell 
craters  in  a  patrol  to  feel  of  the  enemy's  barbed 
wire,  which  had  been  thrilling  enough  at  first.  For 
we  are  an  impatient,  ambitious  people.  We  want 
to  go  on  to  new  sensations.  The  raid  was  not  strictly 
an  American  one;  our  detachments  went  along  with 
the  French,  and  of  course  our  instructors  were  wor- 
ried lest  it  should  not  be  a  success,  for  our  sake. 
It  was  a  perfect  success,  with  no  American  casualties. 
Twenty-two  prisoners,  including  two  officers,  were 
brought  in.  Tell  that  to  Back  Bay  and  Penobscot! 
The  French  Staff  gave  the  lieutenants  who  partici- 
pated a  dinner  in  honor  of  their  achievement.  Briga- 
diers who  led  charges  six  months  later  were  not  so 
honored — everything  being  relative,  as  the  philoso- 
pher says. 

And  do  not  forget  the  guns.  For  the  first  time 
the  Twenty-sixth's  artillery  had  covered  an  attack  in 
practice  by  their  own  men.  "  The  artillery  worked 
well,"  said  the  official  reports.  Such  little  tributes 
count  when  you  are  in  the  line  for  the  first  time 
after  months  of  training.  The  wise  men  at  Ameri- 
can Headquarters  were  saying  that,  in  view  of  the 
way  the  Twenty-sixth  repulsed  other  raids  and 
of  the  way  that  lieutenant  stayed  out  in  the  shell 
bole  and  kept  his  head  when  the  Germans  laid  down 
a  barrage,  and  in  view  of  the  conduct  of  the  Twenty- 


EVERYDAY  FIGHTING  185 

sixth  in  general,  it  might  prove  to  be  as  good  a 
division  as  the  First,  while  the  Forty-second  would 
have  to  work  hard  if  it  were  to  live  up  to  the  stand- 
ard the  Twenty-sixth  had  set. 

"  What  did  they  think?  "  said  a  down-easter  from 
Maine — "  that  we  would  run  away  at  the  sight  of 
them  Bushes,  that  we  didn't  have  brains  enough  to 
learn  the  rules;  that  we'd  melt  in  the  rain?  Why, 
Gosh  Almighty,  we're  growed  up  and  got  beards  on 
our  chins." 

The  Twenty-sixth  had  misery  enough  in  that  sec- 
tor to  entitle  it  to  its  share  of  the  Croix  de  Guerres 
which  were  awarded  for  its  exploits,  and  after  a 
month  of  the  Chemin  des  Dames  it  thought  that  it 
deserved  a  rest,  which  it  would  have  received  if  it 
had  not  happened  that  the  First  was  now  taken  out 
of  the  Toul  sector  and  the  Twenty-sixth  was  sent 
to  take  its  place.  It  was  hard  luck,  as  the  Twenty- 
sixth  was  sure  that  where  it  belonged  was  in  face 
of  the  German  offensive  as  soon  as  it  had  washed 
its  face  and  had  a  nap. 

The  Forty-second  had  heard  all  the  praise  of  the 
Twenty-sixth  with  the  serene  consciousness  that  the 
Twenty-sixth  was  undoubtedly  a  very  good  division 
as  it  was  from  the  United  States;  but  it  was  pro- 
vincial, while  there  was  only  one  Forty-second  which 
was  none  other  than  the  Rainbow  Division.  When 
you  have  a  regiment  from  New  York  City,  mostly 
Irish-American,  and  one  from  Alabama,  with  the 
other  two  from  Iowa  and  Ohio,  and  artillery  from 
Illinois  and  machine  gunners  from  Georgia,  all  in 
one  fold,  a  staff  which  shepherds  the  whole  in  team 
play  need  not  excite  the  spirit  of  competition.     As 


1 86  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

to  which  was  the  best  regiment  of  the  four,  do  not 
ask  the  division  staff,  which  thought  that  all  belonged 
to  the  best  division.  But  a  member  of  the  Ohio 
regiment  would  give  you  an  answer  gladly  without 
waiting  a  second  for  consideration;  and  so  would 
a  member  of  the  Iowa,  the  New  York,  or  the  Ala- 
bama regiments. 

The  question  of  whether  the  chaplain  of  the  New 
York  or  of  the  Alabama  regiment  was  the  more 
militant  is  not  for  an  outsider  to  decide.  They  do 
say  that  when  the  Alabama  chaplain  talked  to  the 
men  before  their  big  raid  in  order  to  incite  them 
to  action  worthy  of  the  regiment's  traditions  in 
the  Civil  War,  he  used  a  swear-word  or  two.  The 
colonel,  whose  evidence  we  must  accept  as  purely  of- 
ficial, insists  that  as  the  words  are  to  be  found  in 
the  gospel  and  were  used  purely  in  the  line  of  duty, 
they  were  free  from  any  of  the  associations  of  pro- 
fanity which  would  have  characterized  them  if  they 
had  been  used  by  a  private  when  he  was  chasing  a 
German  along  a  trench. 

Going  into  the  quiet  Luneville  sector,  the  Forty- 
second  had  more  freedom  of  action  than  the  Twenty- 
sixth  had  had;  in  fact  it  soon  had  the  sector  under 
its  own  command.  The  sector  did  not  remain  quiet, 
because  the  Forty-second  did  not  see  any  reason 
why  the  Germans  should  continue  in  control  of  No 
Man's  Land.  The  Forty-second  was  in  France  to 
make  war  and  it  made  war  by  starting  raids  imme- 
diately. If  the  Germans  interfered  by  machine-gun 
fire — why,  charge  the  machine  guns !  Prisoners  were 
wanted  for  identification  and  the  Forty-second  took 
prisoners,  rounding  up  German  patrols  in  the  night 


EVERYDAY  FIGHTING  187 

and  generally  breaking  up  the  tranquil  existence  of 
that  part  of  the  line.  Raids  became  almost  as  pop- 
ular as  going  for  the  mail  to  a  country  post  office. 
Everybody  must  have  part  in  one,  and  when  a  raid 
carried  through  to  the  second  German  line  without 
finding  any  Germans  there  was  severe  disappoint- 
ment, as  in  order  to  fight  you  must  have  someone  to 
fight  against.  Individual  tacticians,  talking  the  mat- 
ter over  in  the  trenches,  said  that  if  they  were  only 
given  a  chance  for  a  big  attack  they  would  make 
trouble  enough  to  force  Hindenburg  to  bring  over 
some  of  the  divisions  concentrated  for  his  offensive 
in  the  West  in  order  to  restore  a  broken  line  in 
Lorraine. 

"  They're  telling  us  that  when  we're  out  in  front 
and  we're  attacked  to  fall  back  on  points  of  resist- 
ance," said  a  New  York  Irishman.  "  Orders  is 
orders,  but  to  my  mind  that's  only  another  word  for 
retreating  and  I  don't  believe  in  it.  Now  ye  take 
mesilf,  and  you,  Mike  Cooney — ye  know  ye're  spoil- 
ing for  a  fight  though  ye're  smiling  like  an  angel — 
and  you,  Pete  Noonan,  and  you,  Schmidt — you're  a 
good  man  though  you're  a  Dutchman — and  two  or 
three  others  I  could  name  and  give  us  an  extra 
bandolier  of  cartridges  apiece  and  some  of  them 
guinea  footballs  (hand  grenades)  and  let  the  Bushes 
come !  'Twould  be  a  fine  party.  I  see  your  eyes 
glistening,  Mike  Cooney,  at  the  thought  of  it.  Sure, 
we'd  be  thinking  we  was  digging  the  New  York  sub- 
way when  we  was  burying  the  dead  Bushes  the  next 
day." 

Our  artillery  did  not  lack  practice,  particularly  on 
that  occasion  when  we  prepared  for  a  raid  so  thor- 


1 88  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

oughly  that  only  a  torn  German  coat  was  found  on 
the  position  when  the  infantry  arrived.  For  every 
shell  the  German  sent  we  sent  two  shells  in  return. 
This  was  characteristic  of  the  whole  system  of  the 
Rainbows.  They  were  out  for  mastery  over  the  en- 
emy at  every  point,  which  indicates,  through  the 
medium  of  the  Rainbows,  that  when  we  do  go  to 
war  we  do  not  think  in  defensive  terms. 

"  I  reckon  folks  will  learn,  seh,  that  we  ain't 
scairt  of  the  Hun,"  as  a  man  from  Georgia  moun- 
tains said. 

Such  was  the  Rainbows'  record  that  the  wise  men 
at  Headquarters  were  saying  that  it  was  a  question 
if  the  Forty-second  would  not  prove  itself  just  as 
good  as  the  First — though  the  wise  men  did  not 
want  any  division  to  run  away  with  the  notion  that 
It  did  not  have  a  lot  to  learn  yet. 

The  Forty-second  was  marching  back  to  its  rest 
area  when  the  German  offensive  of  March  21st 
required  that  it  retrace  its  steps  to  the  trenches, 
where  it  remained  for  another  three  months,  thus 
relieving  French  divisions  for  other  work,  before  it 
had  its  turn  in  the  big  battle.  Of  course,  the  skillful, 
businesslike  Second,  which  was  regular  and  Marine, 
must  also  be  considered  and  very  decidedly  in  Head- 
quarters' discrimination  about  excellence.  The  sec- 
tor where  it  was  to  have  its  baptism  of  fire  was  just 
east  of  Verdun  and  associated  with  the  River  Meuse, 
which  shares  fame  with  the  Marne  in  the  war,  while 
the  character  of  the  sector  placed  the  Second  strictly 
under  French  command,  its  units  interspersed  among 
the  French.  There  was  no  need  of  stirring  up  enemy 
activity  here.    The  German  was  always  on  his  mettle 


EVERYDAY  FIGHTING  189 

as  if  that  were  the  very  inheritance  of  the  region. 
The  Second  knew  what  it  meant  to  suffer  the  drain 
of  casualties  from  persistent  shell  fire  upon  roads  and 
trenches;  and  it  learned  to  expect  raids  any  night, 
and  that  every  precaution  against  gas  was  worth 
while,  and  that  you  had  to  restrain  your  ardor  under 
French  command. 

On  April  14th  the  Germans  made  a  raid  which 
was  very  much  in  earnest.  At  Maisey  two  com- 
panies were  in  a  position  which  the  French  had 
thought  of  abandoning  because  of  its  bad  tactical 
situation.  The  enemy  took  all  possible  care  to  give 
the  Americans  a  taste  of  Class  A,  Prussian  warfare. 
Their  forces  were  one  company  of  storm  troops  and 
two  other  companies,  which  advanced  under  the 
cover  of  a  box  barrage  after  a  heavy  bombardment 
of  the  rear  area.  When  the  barrage  lifted,  our  men 
came  out  of  their  dugouts  in  the  darkness  at  12 :  30 
in  the  morning  to  see  indistinct  figures  in  their 
trenches  in  French  uniform,  one  of  whom  cried 
"Gas!"  The  Americans  discovered  the  ruse  just 
as  they  started  to  put  on  their  masks.  At  the  cry 
of  "Boche!"  the  fight  began  with  the  ferocity  of 
such  affairs  at  close  quarters,  every  man  concerned 
with  some  shadow  in  the  darkness.  Plain  language 
was  used  and  plainer  methods  of  controversy. 

Meanwhile,  in  the  obscurity  of  the  night,  the 
storm  troops  had  penetrated  the  sub-sector  and 
started  back  with  a  few  prisoners  whom  they  had 
"  breached,"  including  a  doctor  who  was  spending 
a  night  at  the  front  as  an  experience  which,  as  it 
happened,  he  had  in  full.  In  crossing  No  Man's 
Land  some  of  the  prisoners  concluded  to  take   a 


I90  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

chance  against  an  enforced  holiday  in  a  German 
prison  camp.  One  American  knocked  down  his 
captor,  seized  his  rifle,  and  after  bayoneting  him, 
found  the  way  back  to  our  trenches.  There  was  a 
"  milling  "  of  shadows  in  the  gloom,  with  the  result 
that  other  Americans  escaped.  The  German  intelli- 
gence service,  which  was  seeking  information  about 
the  character  of  the  American  soldiers,  might  make 
interesting  notes  the  next  day.  When  casualties  were 
counted  the  Americans  had  the  best  of  the  bargain, 
which  was  not  as  it  should  be  in  the  Ludendorff 
lexicon,  considering  that  the  Germans  had  used  a 
company  of  "  storm  troops "  against  a  "  Yankee 
mob " ;  and  our  companies  were  cross  because  it 
was  time  to  be  relieved  and  they  were  not  allowed 
to  make  a  counter-attack. 

But  we  were  not  boasting,  as  this  was  strictly 
against  the  rules.  We  were  a  modest,  young,  learn- 
ing army,  always  bearing  in  mind  when  the  French 
said  nice  things  that  they  were  a  polite  people ;  and 
when  they  intimated  what  a  lot  we  had  to  learn  we 
made  it  our  business  to  learn  it,  or  the  wise  men  at 
Headquarters  would  no  longer  be  hinting  that  your 
division  might  become  the  best  in  the  army.  Yet  we 
were  pleased  at  the  thought  that  to  date  in  our 
dealings  with  the  Germans  the  balance  had  been  in 
our  favor.  As  a  matter  of  cool,  professional  fact. 
Major  General  Bundy  had  a  right  to  be  proud  of 
the  Second,  and  Major  General  Robert  L.  Bullard, 
who  had  succeeded  Major  General  Sibert  in  com- 
mand, proud  of  the  First,  which  had  been  two 
months  in  the  Toul  sector. 

Holding  the  Toul  sector  was  not  an  agreeable 


EVERYDAY  FIGHTING  191 

business.  It  was  like  sitting  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs 
and  having  a  fellow  at  the  top  throw  rocks  at  you 
from  behind  a  curtain.  The  advantage  is  all  with 
him  rf  he  has  a  nasty  disposition.  Resting  on  the 
trench  fortress  the  French  line  here  occupies  one  side 
of  that  famous  Saint  Mihiel  salient,  which  on  the 
map  looks  an  anomaly  that  ought  to  be  squeezed  out 
of  existence  by  pressure  from  both  sides.  After  their 
"  nibbling  "  to  this  end  in  19 15,  the  French,  who  had 
punished  the  Germans  in  a  period  of  merciless  artil- 
lery fire,  were  satisfied  to  rest  on  a  stalemate  in  this 
region.  The  Germans  occupied  a  line  of  hills  which 
made  their  retention  of  the  salient  practicable. 

Will  any  American  who  has  ever  served  in  the 
Toul  sector  forget  Mont  Sec,  grimly,  contemptuously 
staring  down  at  him?  The  very  name.  Dry  Moun- 
tain, was  an  exasperation  to  men  trying  to  maintain 
trenches  in  swampy  land.  At  least,  the  First  made 
the  Germans  uncomfortable  in  an  era  of  raids  and 
artillery  pounding,  which  established  a  mastery  in 
the  detail  of  trench  combat  as  an  example  for  other 
American  divisions,  which  were  always  taking  notes 
from  its  experience. 

"  What  I  would  like  to  do,"  said  a  soldier,  who 
came  out  of  the  trenches  with  only  his  eyeballs  un- 
encrusted  with  mud,  "  is  to  have  about  five  thousand 
long-range  guns  with  five  hundred  million  rounds  of 
ammunition,  and  then  I'd  like  to  sit  back  in  a  sunny 
place,  lapping  up  an  ice  cream  soda — oh,  go  on ! 
Did  you  hear  me  say  it?  Ice  cream,  Buddy! — and 
shoot  up  that  whole  outfit  all  night  and  all  day  for 
a  few  weeks." 

The  First  and  the  Twenty-sixth,  which  also  had 


192  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

long  service  in  face  of  Mont  Sec,  would  have  almost 
preferred  taking  Mont  Sec  to  taking  Berlin.  Mont 
Sec  was  to  become  a  personal  matter  to  tens  of 
thousands  of  American  soldiers.  At  least,  they 
would  like  to  have  possessed  part  of  it  in  order  that 
the  fighting  might  start  fair.  They  would  have 
charged  up  its  slopes  gladly  if  such  rashness  were 
permitted  by  the  personages  of  the  Staff  who  ride 
about  in  automobiles  looking  over  personnel  and 
ground  and  sit  up  late  at  night  over  maps  and 
reports.  If  there  were  anything  to  make  soldiers 
want  to  go  into  a  real  charge  in  utter  abandon  in 
the  big  battle,  which  must  be  fair  fighting,  it  was 
the  First's  experience  under  Mont  Sec  for  two 
months.  Mont  Sec  was  a  leash  to  make  dogs  of 
war  chafe. 

I  have  already  referred  to  how,  wherever  we  went 
in  France,  we  began  making  an  American  world; 
not  from  any  absence  of  appreciation  of  French 
hospitality,  but  in  the  natural  course  of  doing  things 
according  to  our  habits  and  customs  and  in  the  very 
enthusiasm  of  our  national  youth.  There  may  not 
be  any  American  race  except  the  Red  Indian,  but  a 
few  years  after  a  young  immigrant  arrives  in  Amer- 
ica, although  he  would  not  be  assimilated  if  he 
crossed  the  border  into  another  country  in  Europe, 
he  is  as  inherently  an  American  as  a  Frenchman 
is  French.  We  had  created  an  American  world  at 
our  bases,  depots  and  along  our  lines  of  communica- 
tion; in  the  area  where  our  divisions  trained;  and 
now  we  had  one  at  the  front,  which  completed  the 
stretch  from  sea  to  No  Man's  Land.  If  that  at 
the  front  had  not  the  structural  background  of  our 


EVERYDAY  FIGHTING  193 

building  in  the  S.  O.  S.,  it  was,  in  another  sense,  more 
effectively  American  as  you  entered  an  area  where 
every  human  being  was  an  American  and  an  Amer- 
ican fighting  man. 

We  were  no  longer  novices  in  trench  routine. 
Our  battalions  relieved  one  another  in  the  front  line 
with  professional  facility.  At  first,  we  may  have 
exposed  ourselves  unnecessarily;  but  that  is  better 
than  too  much  timidity.  A  soldier  who  is  too  fearful 
that  he  may  be  hurt  at  the  outset  of  his  service  in 
the  trenches  will  be  very  badly  hurt  in  the  end. 
Our  men  when  off  duty  in  the  trenches  could  sleep 
in  dugouts  under  shell  fire  with  the  best  of  the 
French  veterans.  Two  or  three  experiences  which 
led  to  too  many  unnecessary  casualties  from  gassing 
cured  a  whole  division  in  each  instance  of  careless- 
ness. Among  the  other  firsts  of  the  First  was  the 
taking  over  of  a  divisional  sector  under  direction  of 
an  American  divisional  staff.  This  was  one  of  the 
milestones  of  our  military  progress;  another  had 
been  the  formation  of  our  first  Army  Corps  Staff 
under  Major  General  Hunter  Liggett,  whose  direc- 
tion of  our  pioneer  divisions  in  an  actual  corps  sector 
was  delayed  by  their  dispatch  to  Picardy. 

Nowhere  in  the  A.  E.  F.,  then,  had  the  trans- 
formation in  February  and  March  been  more  re- 
markable than  in  the  combat  zone;  here  the  nega- 
tive had  developed  in  a  complete  picture,  as  it  must 
for  each  sector  we  held  before  we  took  over  an- 
other. I  have  also  mentioned  that  when  Americans 
were  the  protagonists  the  commonplaces  of  war  be- 
came interesting  to  the  American.  Thus,  my  first 
glimpse  of  the  Toul  sector,  when  it  was  our  very 


194  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

own,  gave  to  every  detail,  familiar  through  four 
years  of  observation,  an  appeal  as  fresh  as  all  I  saw 
in  following  up  the  French  army  in  its  pursuit 
of  the  Germans  from  the  Marne  in  19 14.  It  was 
our  world  of  command  there  at  division  headquar- 
ters. Our  officers,  no  longer  students  under  French 
direction,  with  maps  of  tactical  dispositions  which 
they  themselves  had  made  on  the  wall,  were  doing 
business  with  the  confident  manner  of  old  hands, 
arranging  for  patrols  and  raids,  receiving  reports 
and  dispatching  orders,  telephoning  to  brigade  and 
corps  headquarters,  keeping  account  of  ammunition 
and  transport,  controlling  retaliatory  and  interdic- 
tory shell  fire,  keeping  in  touch  with  batteries  and 
battalion  P.  C.'s  night  and  day,  ready  for  any 
emergency,  and  talking  at  mess  of  their  work  in  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  junior  partner  in  the  Allied  con- 
cern which  has  set  up  a  branch  house  responsible 
for  the  trade  in  a  certain  district.  We  had  learned 
the  technique  from  our  instructors  and  were  still 
learning,  but  we  were  going  ahead  in  our  own  way. 
It  was  our  world,  too,  in  the  villages  under  our 
own  majors  at  the  rear,  where  our  battalions  out 
of  the  trenches  rested  beyond  the  range  of  habitual 
shell  fire  but  subject  to  bombing  from  the  German 
planes  on  occasion;  our  world,  too,  at  the  ammuni- 
tion dumps  and  supply  depots  and  railheads  and 
where  columns  of  motor  trucks  stood  at  rest  or  were 
in  movement;  our  world  forward  toward  the  sound 
of  the  guns,  where  a  military  policeman  took  care 
to  warn  you  of  your  mistake  if  you  had  not  obeyed 
the  wayside  sign  to  put  your  gas  respirator  at  the 
"  alert "  and  where  cellars  under  the  ruins  of  a  vil- 


EVERYDAY  FIGHTING  195 

lage  were  reenforced  for  protection  against  shell 
fire  for  a  regimental  or  a  battalion  commander's 
dugout  or  for  housing  troops  in  support;  our  world 
in  the  zone,  beyond  the  automobile  limit,  where  the 
roads  were  empty  by  day  and  the  land  lifeless  to 
view  except  for  a  dispatch  rider  or  one  or  two 
moving  figures  suggestive  of  stray  travelers  in  the 
desert,  and  where,  if  no  guns  happened  to  be  firing, 
the  rattle  of  a  machine  gun  might  break  the  silence 
as  abruptly  as  the  pecking  of  a  woodpecker  in  a 
silent  wood;  our  world  where  batteries  were  hidden 
under  their  camouflage  and  gunners  lounged  about 
ready  for  orders  to  fire  or  orders  to  take  cover  in 
their  dugouts  under  a  sudden  concentration  of  fire; 
our  world  where  signboards  indicated  the  Buffalo 
or  the  Chicago  or  the  Oskaloosa  trench;  our  world 
out  in  the  outpost  trenches  in  a  swamp  where  men 
stood  in  water  to  their  hips  or  stood  on  dry  duck 
boards;  our  world  out  in  isolated  machine-gun  posi- 
tions in  support,  where  two  men  waited  and  watched, 
never  taking  their  eyes  off  a  certain  sector  which  they 
might  have  to  sweep  with  their  fire;  our  world, 
where  you  heard  practical  talk  about  minor  tactics 
and  dream  talk  about  grand  strategy  from  young 
lieutenants,  while  they  served  you  corned  beef  hash 
and  canned  com  and  American  crackers  and  shot  a 
stream  from  the  tinned  cow  into  your  coffee  cup — 
which  is  not  any  conscious  attempt  to  make  a  long 
sentence  in  tying  a  number  of  impressions  together 
in  order  that  parents  at  home  may  see  what  their 
sons  are  doing  in  an  American  sector.  We  were 
getting  used  to  war;  settling  down  to  its  orderly 
processes. 


196  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

At  nightfall,  the  engineers  took  their  picks  and 
shovels  and  their  lives  in  their  hands  and  went  out 
to  their  digging  or  to  lay  barbed  wire  with  that  con- 
scientious effort  to  avoid  noise  which  the  conse- 
quences of  a  burst  of  shell  fire  teaches.  Drivers  of 
supply  and  ammunition  wagons  had  learned  to  be 
owls  who  slept  by  day  and  labored  by  night,  as  they 
moved  along  the  roads  not  knowing  what  minute  a 
scream  and  a  crack  and  a  circle  of  light  from  a  shell 
might  put  a  wagon  out  of  business.  Everybody  con- 
cerned now  had  enough  sense,  when  he  heard  the 
scream  of  a  big  shell  or  when  the  first  shrapnel  broke 
in  his  vicinity,  to  disregard  curiosity  and  seek  the 
nearest  protection. 

Hot  meals  in  the  "  marmites  "  were  carried  from 
the  rolling  kitchens  to  the  men  in  the  front  line  with 
punctual  regularity.  Relieving  battalions  went  up 
with  the  steady  tramp  of  strength  renewed  to  take 
the  place  of  tired  men,  whose  steps  scraped  a  little 
on  the  road  as  they  returned  to  have  their  old 
clothes  put  through  the  disinfecting  machine  that 
kills  the  "  cooties,"  and  to  know  the  joy  of  clean 
underclothes  against  clean  skin,  and,  after  a  sleep, 
to  go  over  to  the  "  Y  "  and  see  the  movies  and  write 
letters  and  read  the  "  Stars  and  Stripes  "  and  rest 
until  they  were  sent  back  to  the  line. 

"  Deloused  and  Y.  M.  C.  A.'ed,"  we  called  the 
process. 

The  "  Y,"  too,  had  settled  down  to  its  stride,  and 
the  Red  Cross  had  made  Toul  an  important  base  of 
its  activities.  Practice  had  shown  the  auxiliaries  who 
were  real  workers  and  who  were  not  in  their  part 
as  adjunct  to  that  of  the  gallant  army  hospital  corps 


EVERYDAY  FIGHTING  197 

men,  who  brought  the  litters  with  wounded  back 
from  under  fire  to  stations  where  the  ambulances 
took  them  to  the  hospitals.  Doctors  were  also  be- 
coming accustomed  to  the  daily  casualty  lists,  which 
might  be  suddenly  increased  when  some  action  out 
of  the  ordinary  routine  occurred.  Everything  was 
being  done  with  a  thoroughness  in  keeping  with  all 
our  training  and  plans. 

A  new  jargon  was  spoken  in  the  old  haunts  of 
that  of  the  poilu  which  has  been  so  confounding  to 
the  purists  of  the  French  academy.  A  fight  was  a 
"  party."  "  We  smeared  "  the  enemy  with  our  artil- 
lery fire.  We  "  shot  up  the  whole  works  "  and  "  put 
one  over  "  on  the  enemy  "  right  on  the  bean,"  and 
we  admitted  the  fact  when  he  made  a  "  hot  come- 
back "  at  us.  Nobody  wanted  to  be  called  "  Sammy  " 
or  "  Buddy  "  in  the  newspapers.  "  Yanks  "  was 
more  acceptable;  and  in  any  event  every  private  was 
a  "boy."  "  Fanned!  "  exclaimed  a  soldier  when  a 
bullet  struck  against  the  parados  of  a  trench  within 
an  inch  of  his  ear.  "Attaboy!"  greeted  a  patrol 
returning  with  prisoners.  "You're  pinched!" 
greeted  German  prisoners  breached  from  a  dug- 
out. "  Game  called  on  account  of  rain,"  remarked 
a  soldier  when  our  guns  laid  down  a  barrage  that 
stopped  a  German  raid. 

When  spring  came  in  the  Woevre  and  in  Lorraine 
with  a  premature  burst — which  was  followed  by  a 
relapse — our  spirits  rose  with  the  sap  in  the  trees. 
There  was  really  sun  in  sunny  France,  its  vitalizing 
glow  drying  the  trenches  and  inviting  men  out  of 
doors  under  soft,  blue  skies.  This  meant  marble 
time  at  home  for  "  kid  "  brothers,  while  big  brothers 


198  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

in  France  brought  out  mitts,  balls  and  bats  and  laid 
out  diamonds  on  the  outskirts  of  the  villages.  The 
lengthening  days  gave  pitchers  time  to  try  out  their 
curves  in  the  streets  in  front  of  their  billets  after 
supper  with  a  view  to  future  games  for  the  honor 
of  their  units.  Men  who  had  fallen  out  of  the  habit 
of  baseball  at  home  found  it  an  added  relief  from 
homesickness. 

Bare  fields  were  showing  green,  the  woods,  from 
skeleton  trunks  and  limbs,  were  transformed  into 
soft  masses  of  green  and  the  trees  along  the  roads 
and  the  canals  and  rivers  shook  out  their  parasols 
of  green.  Women  and  old  men  were  digging  in 
the  gardens.  The  landscape  of  France  was  smiling 
under  the  sun  of  France.  It  took  more  than  a  Ger- 
man offensive  to  restrain  American  optimism  when 
summer  was  at  hand,  when  our  army  was  coming 
into  its  own  and  when  we  hardly  required  reports 
from  home  to  assure  us  that  the  heart  of  our  people 
was  now  in  France.  This  seemed  to  come  to  us  in 
telepathic  wave  forces  from  the  gathering  force  in 
the  other  *'  over  there  "  which  was  the  best  cure  of 
all  for  homesickness.  We  were  no  longer  pulling 
upstream. 


XVI 


ALL  WE   HAVE 

The  great  German  offensive  of  March  21st — Superiority  of  German 
interior  lines  and  man-power — A  thousand  Germans  to  one 
Briton  at  critical  points — No  "  limited  objective "  offensive — 
A  great  but  not  a  complete  success — Pitiable  procession  of 
refugees — Bulldog  British  and  fiery  French  give  way  but  won't 
yield — What  America  did  to  stem  the  tide — Foch  and  unity  of 
command — General  Pershing  offers  the  American  army  to 
Marshal  Foch — The  bridge  of  ships. 

The  German  army  was  now  to  take  a  hand  in  the 
Secretary's  visit  and  relate  it  to  a  great  crisis  and 
great  decisions.  He  had  reviewed  the  First  Di- 
vision on  the  afternoon  of  March  20th.  On  the 
morning  of  March  21st,  when  he  arrived  at  French 
headquarters  with  General  Pershing  to  confer  with 
General  Petain,  the  thunders  of  the  artillery  of  the 
German  offensive  were  audible.  Concentration  of 
shell  fire  along  the  proposed  route  interfered  with 
his  plan  of  going  over  the  old  battlefields  of  the 
Somme  on  his  way  to  British  headquarters,  where 
the  evening  found  the  news  still  vague;  but  in  Eng- 
land, where  he  later  spent  two  days  in  conference 
with  leaders,  there  was  no  lack  of  definiteness  in 
the  brief  and  merciless  bulletins  which  showed  the 
German  battle  line  advancing.  Not  since  it  learned 
the  truth  of  the  retreat  from  Mons,  with  von  Kluck's 

199 


200  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

army  approaching  Paris,  had  London  had  such  a 
gloomy  Sunday. 

Ludendorff  had  kept  his  promise  of  a  mighty 
blow,  though  not  in  Lorraine  which  he  had  adver- 
tised as  the  location  with  a  view  to  drawing  French 
reserves  to  the  East.  Prepared  to  attack  in  either 
Champagne  or  Picardy,  he  could  svv'ing  his  reserves 
right  or  left  toward  either  sector  along  very  short 
Interior  lines.  Though  the  British  and  French  Staffs 
had  considered  the  offensive  Imminent  and  thought 
that  It  would  be  In  Picardy,  they  were  at  the  tactical 
disadvantage  of  not  knowing  the  exact  point  where 
its  greatest  weight  would  be  brought  to  bear. 

The  Germans  had  planned  such  a  sudden,  terrific, 
irresistible  thrust  as  they  had  made  at  Caporetto. 
They  reasoned  that  the  French  army  was  already 
exhausted.  Crush  the  British  army  back  upon  its 
bases,  separate  it  from  the  French  army  and  then 
the  French  would  be  at  their  mercy.  America  could 
put  no  considerable  force  into  action  until  the  most 
stupendous  and  daring  military  conception  of  the 
war  should  have  been  accomplished.  If  report  be 
true,  Ludendorff  had  given  his  word  to  the  Kaiser 
that  he  would  win  peace  by  imposing  his  will  upon 
the  enemy.  His  confidence  In  himself  was  complete. 
His  superiority  in  man-power  over  his  adversaries 
was  to  be  translated  into  a  hundred  and  two  hundred 
per  cent  along  the  front  of  action,  Into  five  hundred 
and  a  thousand  at  critical  points.  He  relied  upon 
more  than  strategic  plan  and  the  adaptation  of  tacti- 
cal dispositions  to  gain  his  object;  upon  that  Industry 
In  preparation  of  detail  which  leaves  out  nothing 
that  prevision  can  foresee  and  application  accom- 


ALL  WE  HAVE  20  r 

plish;  upon  such  masses  of  artillery  as  had  never 
before  been  brought  together  with  its  power  unre- 
veale3  by  the  ordinary  method  of  registration. 

The  troops  which  he  had  trained  with  a  sinister 
thoroughness  for  their  task,  and  blooded  to  their 
task  with  the  confidence  born  of  past  successes  on 
the  Eastern  front  and  of  a  promise  of  their  repetition 
on  the  Western  front,  knew  that  the  winning  of  their 
goal  meant  that  Germany  was  master  of  Europe. 
They  might  then  choose  their  place  in  the  sun;  and 
lay  an  indemnity  on  France  which  should  make  her 
the  servant  of  German  power. 

Fresh  from  their  long  rests,  the  chosen  attack 
divisions  were  not  to  be  bound  by  the  traditions  of 
"  limited-objective "  offensives  on  the  Western 
front.  Instead  of  advancing  to  a  given  line  and 
then  settling  down  to  organize  It  under  shell  fire, 
they  were  to  sweep  through  the  front  line  and  sup- 
port trenches  to  the  capture  of  the  guns  and  keep 
on,  throwing  division  staffs  Into  confusion  and 
breaking  up  organizations,  as  they  dragged  forward 
their  trench  mortars  and  machine  guns,  all  accord- 
ing to  their  rehearsed  procedure  to  win  a  great 
victory  by  superior  maneuvering  In  concentrating 
masses  in  a  new  war  of  movement.  The  fiercest 
impact  would  be  at  the  junction  of  the  British  and 
French  armies  to  take  advantage  of  lack  of  coopera- 
tion In  summoning  prompt  defense. 

In  part,  this  plan  succeeded,  for  several  reasons. 
Earlier  in  the  year  the  British  had  taken  over  a  part 
of  the  line  from  the  French,  thus  weakening  their 
density.  The  strength  of  the  attack  was  beyond 
Allied  expectations.    We  were  too  firmly  established 


202  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

in  our  confidence  in  the  defensive  power  of  the 
trench  system.  We  lacked  an  adequate  second  line 
of  defense  where  we  could  rally  our  forces.  Yet 
Ludendorff  did  not  accomplish  his  ultimate  purpose. 
His  failure  was  partly  due  to  German  ignorance 
of  French  and  British  character.  The  Anglo-French 
armies  began  effectual  resistance  just  at  the  time, 
when,  according  to  the  German  book,  they  ought  to 
have  been  in  full  rout.  Though  the  Allies  had  com- 
mitted their  share  of  blunders  in  this  war,  one  of 
the  chief  German  blunders  had  been  in  relying  at 
the  wrong  time  upon  Allied  blunders. 

But  the  result  was  harrowing  enough  for  one  who 
had  seen  the  British  and  French  in  the  Somme  battle. 
Biaches,  Thiepval,  Pozieres  and  other  points  which 
had  been  won  by  the  hammering  processes  of  siege 
tactics  had  passed  into  German  hands  within  a  week. 
For  the  first  time,  since  19 14,  refugees  were  again 
on  the  roads.  Many  of  them  were  making  their 
second  flight.  They  had  returned  to  the  ruins  of 
their  homes  after  the  German  retreat  to  the  Hinden- 
burg  line  and  begun  repairing  their  fortunes.  They 
had  done  their  fall  plowing  in  19 17  and  their  spring 
planting  in  19 18,  thinking  themselves  secure  until 
suddenly  the  storm  broke  in  the  distance  and  came 
crashing  forward.  With  what  they  could  carry  they 
again  set  out;  the  well-to-do  farmers  with  their 
household  goods  piled  on  their  carts  drawn  by  their 
sleek  Percherons,  and  boys  and  girls  driving  cows; 
the  townspeople  pushing  baby  carriages  piled  with 
their  treasures,  and  old  men  and  old  women  under 
heavy  burdens  and  little  children  plodding  along  be- 
side them,  some  in  their  best  black  clothes  and  bon- 


ALL  WE  HAVE  203 

nets  and  hats — which  was  the  easiest  way  to  carry 
them — as  if  they  were  going  to  church;  and  gray- 
haired  farmers  with  shirts  and  trousers  earthstained 
and  schoolboys  in  their  smoclcs  with  their  books 
under  arms.  All  they  held  dear,  all  they  had  rebuilt, 
the  promise  of  their  crops  and  gardens  and  their 
labor  lost — all  except  the  thing  in  their  blood,  their 
hearts,  their  souls  that  made  them  French.  The 
German  communiques  took  pains  to  mention  too, 
where  the  Germans  had  gained  ground  not  fought 
over  before  which  turned  people  out  of  homes  never 
before  under  fire. 

"  I'm  used  to  it,"  said  a  peasant  woman,  who  was 
making  her  second  flight,  to  one  who  was  making 
her  first.  "  There  is  no  use  of  complaining,  my 
dear.  Never  mind  if  you  have  no  relatives  in  the 
back  country,  you'll  find  friends  there  who  will  share 
their  homes.  It's  only  prosperity  that  makes  people 
unkind.  Adversity  makes  them  kind."  Our  Red 
Cross,  which  exists  for  such  work  as  this,  and  had 
the  funds  to  carry  out  such  work,  had  its  oppor- 
tunity. 

Emotion  was  fluid,  destiny  playing  toss  with 
death,  horror  was  young  again  as  in  19 14;  and  the 
wells  of  pity  which  had  gone  dry  were  filled  to  over- 
flowing again.  Minds  set  into  molds  that  had  been 
taking  war  as  normal  existence  could  respond  as 
they  had  not  for  three  years  to  the  sight  of  suffer- 
ing. The  monster  was  out  of  his  trench  lair,  on 
the  move,  and  the  uncertainty  was  as  taut  and  inex- 
pressible as  in  the  first  battle  of  the  Marne — which 
was  good  news  for  the  Kaiser.  The  most  High  of 
Hohenzollerns  had  Himself  taken  this  battle  under 


204  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

His  patronage.  He  had  won  a  great  victory;  great 
numbers  of  prisoners,  great  quantities  of  material. 
We  had  taken  another  lesson  from  the  German 
masters  of  war,  which  was  reaction  to  war  in  the 
open;  but  in  return,  one  day  on  the  Marne  where 
Joffre  gave  the  Germans  a  lesson,  Americans  were 
to  aid  General  Foch  in  giving  them  another. 

After  the  fearful  experiences  of  the  British  Fifth 
Army,  the  British  soldier  inhibited  to  trench  war- 
fare with  little  experience  in  open  warfare,  was 
somewhat  in  the  frame  of  mind  of  a  man  caught 
abroad  naked.  He  might  be  dazed,  but  he  was  not 
panic-stricken  as  he  trudged  along  in  retreat  with  all 
his  equipment  on  his  back.  Reform  him  into  an 
organization  and  he  would  give  the  same  stubborn 
account  of  himself  as  on  former  occasions.  This 
was  his  nature.  It  could  not  be  changed  by  Luden- 
dorff  in  order  that  the  Kaiser  might  make  a  theatric 
speech  in  a  Channel  port  as  he  looked  across  at  hated 
England. 

The  French  soldier,  thrifty  in  the  trenches,  and 
calculating  at  the  sight  of  the  refugees  and  of  his 
comrades  in  flight,  responded  with  all  the  fiery  spirit 
he  had  shown  on  the  Marne.  Although  Ludendorff, 
with  his  interior  lines,  had  his  reserves  at  the  hub 
of  the  wheel  and  might  run  them  down  a  spoke  while 
we  had  to  move  around  the  rim  to  meet  his  con- 
centrations, the  French  divisions  and  the  French 
cavalry,  too,  were  on  time  as  the  French  have  a  fac- 
ulty of  being.  Civilization  took  a  full  breath  again 
when  the  Germans  were  stopped  and  a  new  line  was 
drawn  on  the  map  within  nine  miles  of  Amiens. 

All  illusions  were  over  in  any  man's  mind  at  the 


ALL  WE  HAVE  205 

sight  of  the  refugees.  As  they  touched  the  heart 
of  the  observer  it  was  hoped  that  they  would  touch 
the  heart  of  all  America.  Germany  stood  revealed 
as  having  no  peace  to  offer  except  on  the  terms 
pledged  in  the  ambitions  of  an  offensive  of  which, 
as  we  were  assured,  we  had  seen  only  the  first  move. 
Dreamers,  who  had  had  faith  in  a  democratic  move- 
ment rising  within  Germany  while  Ludendorfif 
massed  his  divisions  and  guns,  might  now  realize 
that  all  German  classes  were  as  thoroughly  cor- 
ivpted  by  the  prize  of  profit  by  conquest  held  out  by 
the  German  Staff  as  any  crew  of  pirates  that  ever 
took  to  the  seas. 

Germany  was  as  war  mad  as  in  the  days'  when 
her  troops  swung  through  Belgium,  leaving  a  trail  of 
destruction  behind  them.  Nothing  could  unsaddle 
the  men  who  rode  her  war  horses,  except  the  thrust 
of  steel.  Never  had  the  issue  been  so  clear;  never 
had  force  been  more  surely  the  only  means  to  an 
end. 

Civilization  might  take  a  full  breath  of  relief, 
but  civilization  must  also  realize  that  the  Germans 
had  superior  numbers  and  the  advantage  of  initiative 
and  position.  Their  losses  had  not  exceeded  those 
of  the  Allies;  possibly  they  had  been  less.  We  had 
lost  much  material.  With  all  Europe  war-weary, 
Germany  looked  to  the  marshaling  of  enough  di- 
visions in  succeeding  thrusts  to  weaken  the  Allied 
will  until  it  broke.  Faith  in  speedy  victory  spurred 
the  German  soldier,  while  the  British  and  the  French 
were  to  "  stone-wall  "  again  as  they  had  at  the  first 
battle  of  Ypres  and  the  French  had  at  Verdun. 
Another  drive,  gaining  the  same  depth  as  that  of 


2o6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

March  2ist-2  8th,  toward  Paris  would  bring  the  city 
under  German  guns!  Another  toward  the  Channel 
would  drive  the  British  army,  which  already  had 
none  too  much  room  for  maneuvering,  back  upon 
its  bases.  After  four  years  of  war  in  which  tens  of 
millions  had  been  engaged,  it  seemed  possible  that 
twenty-five  or  thirty  fresh  attack  divisions  might 
decide  the  fate  of  the  world. 

The  American  officer  who  had  written  the  figures 
on  the  pad  in  December  and  said  that  "  it  was  up 
to  us  "  was  a  true  prophet.  After  his  return  from 
London,  Secretary  Baker  had  a  conference  with  Gen- 
erals Pershing  and  Bliss  in  Paris,  while  the  Ger- 
mans were  still  making  strides  toward  Amiens, 
which  even  the  most  sceptical  about  posterity's  judg- 
ments will  surely  consider  as  of  vital  historical  im- 
portance. It  considered  what  we  could  do  to  aid 
in  the  crisis;  and  considered,  too,  the  question  of 
unity  of  command  in  which  General  Pershing  had 
been  deeply  interested  from  the  first.  In  the  course 
of  conversation  on  board  ship  in  crossing  the  At- 
lantic he  had  said  that  some  one  man — it  did  not 
matter  whether  he  was  a  Frenchman  or  a  Briton — 
must  have  the  power  of  coordinating  effort  and 
plans  and  of  making  decisions  in  the  midst  of  action 
on  the  Western  front.  After  his  arrival  in  France 
he  continued  to  express  the  same  view,  but, 
naturally,  our  influence  in  Allied  military  coun- 
cils was  very  limited  in  the  early  days  of  our  expe- 
dition. 

The  Supreme  War  Council  at  Versailles  had  in 
no  sense  meant  unity  of  command.  It  was  only  a 
body  which  sought  unity  of  effort  through  the  com- 


ALL  WE  HAVE  207 

promises  of  conferences.  General  Foch  was  sup- 
posed to  have  a  mobile  strategic  reserve  placed  at 
his  disposition  to  meet  the  very  emergency  which 
had  found  him  without  any  adequate  force  for  a 
counter-attack.  Instead  of  assigning  him  British 
reserve  divisions,  the  War  Council  had  left  the  Brit- 
ish to  take  over  more  line  from  the  French. 

Where  the  threat  of  the  German  offensive  on  the 
Western  front  had  led  to  the  establishment  of  the 
War  Council,  now  the  German  offensive  revealed  in 
its  telling  application  the  disadvantage  of  divided 
against  single  command.  Those  who  had  conceived 
the  Council  as  a  means  of  gratifying  public  opinion 
in  December  were  under  renewed  pressure  to  take 
the  step  which  should  have  been  taken  in  December. 
Many  cross  currents  were  at  work  in  that  critical 
time  in  inner  circles  of  influence,  and  they  brought 
forth  the  announcement  that  General  Foch  had  been 
made  commander  of  the  Allied  armies;  but,  taken 
with  the  private  reports  that  one  heard,  the  an- 
nouncement seemed  to  make  the  character  of  his 
authority  uncertain.  Fortunately,  Secretary  Baker 
was  on  the  spot,  and  he  might  state  his  views  to  the 
Allies  and  also  direct  to  the  President  as  the  re- 
sult of  first-hand  information.  His  cablegram  was 
hardly  on  the  wire  when  the  President,  who  had 
intuitively  grasped  the  situation,  anticipated  the  re- 
ceipt of  his  request  by  compliance  in  one  of  his  own. 
A  few  felicitous  words  from  him  congratulating  Gen- 
eral Foch  upon  his  appointment,  at  a  juncture  when 
our  influence  in  Allied  affairs  had  great  weight, 
seemed  to  be  a  graceful  and  definite  means  of  con- 
firming the  new  commander  in  complete  authority. 


2o8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

On  the  morning  of  March  28th,  after  the  con- 
ference, General  Pershing's  desire  now  having  the 
President's  approval,  he  hurried  to  General  Foch, 
whom  he  found  in  his  garden  at  his  new  headquar- 
ters. He  took  General  Foch  by  the  arm  and  walk- 
ing to  one  side,  informally  in  the  impulse  of  his 
emotion,  speaking  in  French,  offered,  as  commander 
of  the  American  army,  all  our  troops  and  all  our 
material  in  France  to  General  Foch  to  do  with  as 
he  pleased.  His  words  were  written  out  as  they 
were  remembered.  When  they  were  published  they 
thrilled  all  France  and  all  America.  Coming  at  the 
same  time  as  the  President's  congratulations,  they 
led  the  public  to  think  that  unity  of  command  was 
an  accomplished  fact,  but  it  was  not,  as  later  devel- 
opments were  to  prove. 

General  Pershing's  offer  meant  the  postponement 
of  the  idea  of  a  distinct  American  sector  of  opera- 
tions which  would  have  soon  become  a  fact.  We 
had,  at  the  time,  four  divisions  with  experience  in 
the  trenches  of  quiet  or  relatively  quiet  sectors. 
Two  other  divisions  were  practically  formed,  al- 
though awaiting  their  artillery.  Their  occupation  of 
any  part  of  the  lines  was  at  least  releasing  French 
soldiers  for  service  elsewhere,  but  this  was  police 
work  compared  to  resisting  the  German  offensive. 
There  was  not  a  soldier  of  ours  in  the  trenches  or 
out  of  the  trenches  who  did  not  feel  that  his  place 
was  in  the  great  battle.  To  their  reasoning  we  must 
be  represented  there  or  we  were  "  not  playing  the 
game."  Every  sentiment  that  ever  called  any  brave 
man  to  the  side  of  a  comrade  called  us  to  PIcardy. 
Besides,  all  we  had  in  France,  all  those  structures 


ALL  WE  HAVE  209 

we  had  down  in  the  S.  O.  S. — what  use  were  they 
if  the  Germans  should  win  a  decision?  We  might 
bring  our  millions ;  but  where  would  be  their  fighting 
ground? 

Of  the  four  divisions  the  First,  of  course,  had 
had  the  most  experience.  Some  professional  ob- 
servers were  not  certain  whether  or  not  even  the 
First  was  fit  to  be  thrown  into  the  vortex  of  a  vio- 
lent battle.  Others  said  that  there  was  no  division 
in  France  which  could  equal  it  in  an  offensive.  They 
wanted  to  see  it  in  a  counter-attack;  and  our  men 
put  the  seal  on  this  opinion  with  their  thought  that 
maybe  if  they  had  not  had  enough  schooling  they 
could  fight.  Let  them  at  the  Germans !  The  sequel 
of  the  announcement  that  we  would  give  all  we  had 
in  any  service  was  that  the  First  was  to  be  relieved 
from  the  trenches  in  the  Toul  sector  and  to  entrain 
for  the  battle  area.  * 

The  divisions  already  formed  did  not  represent 
all  our  war  strength  in  France.  We  had  our  organ- 
ization thoroughly  and  systematically  built  in  prep- 
aration for  larger  responsibilities.  In  the  camps 
at  home  were  a  million  and  a  half  men  who  had 
been  as  thoroughly  trained  as  they  might  be  in  a 
short  time  three  thousand  miles  from  the  battle- 
field. They  waited  on  the  bridge  across  the 
Atlantic. 

Our  programme  of  troop  transport,  with  its  grad- 
ual increase  as  we  built  shipping,  no  longer  applied 
when  the  Allied  house  was  on  fire.  Ships  must  be 
found,  Dutch,  Japanese,  any  kind.  The  man-power 
of  America  must  be  brought  to  France.  England 
had  shipping  to   spare   when   disaster   on   the   old 


2IO  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Somme  battlefield  called  for  a  "  speeding  up  "  which 
nothing  else  had  effected.  At  the  Abbeville  confer- 
ence later,  she  agreed  to  supply  the  bridge,  and  in 
return  a  number  of  divisions  were  to  be  assigned  to 
her  army  for  training  and  for  use  in  emergency. 


XVII 

OUR   FIRST  OFFENSIVE 

Tke  First  Division  being  groomed  for  action — Use  for  billiard 
table  in  war — General  Pershing's  straight  talk  to  the  first 
American  division  to  enter  a  battle  in  Europe — General 
Bullard — Business  details  of  moving  twenty-seven  thousand 
men — French  food  for  Yankee  fighters — Approaching  a  sector 
of  fighting  in  the  open — The  First  takes  it  over  from  the 
French — Getting  ready  for  the  first  real  American  attack — 
In  front  of  Cantigny  just  before  the  zero  hour — A  quick  victory 
— German  revenge — Making  oneself  at  home  in  "strafed" 
territory. 

Officers  and  men  of  the  First  Division  had  their 
part  fully  planned  in  their  own  minds.  General 
Foch  would  make  a  great  counter-attack.  They 
would  be  jumped  off  the  train  and  rushed  into  a 
charge.  This  was  the  dramatic  thing,  although  not 
the  thing  that  suited  the  plan  of  the  moment.  With 
the  second  German  offensive  now  holding  the  High 
Command's  attention  to  the  Ypres  salient,  we  were 
to  continue  to  parry  blows  before  we  struck  a  blow  in 
return. 

The  First  was  assigned  to  a  billeting  area  be- 
tween Paris  and  the  battle  front,  where  it  became  a 
unit  ready  for  action  as  a  part  of  a  strategic  reserve. 
It  might  be  certain  that  in  such  a  critical  period  it 
would  not  have  to  wait  long  before  being  employed. 
Never  did  guests  receive  a  more  significant  welcome 
from  their  hosts  than  our  men  in  the  pleasant  coun- 


212  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

^ryside  of  the  Oise.  It  was  not  a  welcome  of  arches 
and  flag-waving  or  ceremony  of  any  kind,  but  a  per- 
sonal one  from  men  and  women  who  saw  the  Ameri- 
cans for  the  first  time  and  saw  them  as  a  wall  of 
trained  youth  between  the  ruin  of  homes  and  the  fate 
of  the  refugees  who  had  been  passing  on  the 
roads. 

Meanwhile,  the  shining  hours  were  to  be  improved 
by  a  "  brushing  up  "  process,  as  General  Pershing 
called  it.  Open  warfare  having  returned  to  the 
Western  front,  trench  kinks  were  to  be  taken  out 
of  the  men's  minds  and  legs  by  drill  which  was  sug- 
gestive of  the  part  now  expected  of  them.  Each 
young  lieutenant  realized  afresh  the  responsibility  for 
taking  a  platoon  into  action.  Brigade  and  regimen- 
tal commanders  were  busy  with  innumerable  details 
when  not  summoned  to  conferences  by  superiors. 
They  had  no  time  to  discuss  the  tapestries  on  the 
walls  of  the  chateaux  which  they  occupied  or  to  take 
walks  in  the  grounds.  Commanders  had  great  luck  in 
chateaux  on  this  occasion.  Spacious  dining-rooms 
became  regimental  mess  rooms  where  officers  ate 
simple  fare  in  a  hurry. 

When  I  sought  a  colonel  I  was  conducted  along 
a  hall  with  high  ceilings  and  statues  and  through 
the  great  salon  to  the  study  of  the  owner,  where 
the  colonel  was  dictating  orders  to  a  field  clerk. 
Everywhere,  throughout  this  war,  billiard  tables  in 
chateaux  have  served  the  same  practical  purpose 
for  spreading  out  maps.  We  followed  the  custom. 
Every  table  in  our  area  was  in  use.  After  the  war 
chateau  billiard  tables  should  bear  brass  placques 
of  this  kind:  "  Upon  this  table  General  X.  planned 


OUR  FIRST  OFFENSIVE  213 

the  assault  on ;  "  or  "  Here  General  H.  planned 

his  artillery  barrages  for  the  battle  of ." 

Just  by  way  of  making  sure  that  the  commissioned 
personnel  should  not  be  idle  or  lapse  into  mental 
ruts,  that  indefatigable  lieutenant-colonel  of  the  di- 
vision staff,  who  had  been  doing  this  sort  of  thing 
with  irrepressible  enthusiasm  since  the  First  arrived 
in  France,  "  emitted  "  another  training  "  problem." 
This  time  infantry  and  artillery  were  to  be  repre- 
sented in  theory  and  the  officers  were  to  go  through 
all  the  business  of  retaking  some  of  the  peaceful 
countryside  from  an  imaginary  enemy.  General 
Pershing  stood  in  the  village  square  with  General 
Bullard  and  a  French  general  and  staff  officers  to 
watch  the  staff  work  in  meeting  the  imaginary  emer- 
gencies which  reports  brought  from  that  imaginary 
front. 

The  men  liked  this  kind  of  a  problem  for  a  change. 
It  gave  them  a  day  to  sit  about  their  billets  and 
lounge  about  the  streets.  They  needed  rest  to  build 
up  tissue  as  reserve  for  any  forthcoming  demand  on 
their  strength.  That  night  the  officers  were  asked  to 
write  out  any  suggestions  they  might  have  which 
might  be  of  service,  as  the  result  of  their  experi- 
ence, and  the  next  morning  all  the  field  officers  of 
the  division  were  gathered  in  a  circle  back  of  the 
chateau  which  General  Bullard  occupied,  in  order 
that  General  Pershing  might  say  a  few  words  to 
them.  He  made  it  clear  what  was  expected  of  that 
division  as  the  first  American  division  to  enter  an 
active  battle  sector  in  Europe;  the  importance  of 
the  determination  that  "  carries  through,"  of  hold- 
ing  the   confidence   of   their   men   and   of   meeting 


214  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

situations  which  no  training  or  orders  could  antici- 
pate. 

It  was  a  good,  straight  soldier  talk,  a  reminder  of 
the  essential,  immemorial  principles  of  the  offensive 
spirit  in  war,  the  spirit  which  he  had  taught  from 
the  first.  Anyone  looking  into  the  faces  of  the  offi- 
cers, a  type  of  all  the  officers  of  our  divisions  to 
serve  in  France,  had  no  doubt  of  how  the  First  and 
all  of  our  other  divisions  would  fight.  They  and  the 
men  in  the  billets  were  taut  of  nerve,  keyed  up  for 
any  test. 

General  Pershing  might  be  thinking  of  many  di- 
visions, but  General  Bullard  naturally  was  thinking 
of  only  one,  his  own,  which  he  had  fathered  through 
the  Toul  sector.  He  came  from  Georgia  and  re- 
tained his  Southern  accent,  a  slim,  wiry  man  whose 
bright  eyes  twinkled  when  he  made  an  epigram  or 
flashed  when  he  remarked,  "  If  you  are  determined 
to  die  in  your  tracks  you  will  not  die,  but  the  other 
fellow  will  if  you  know  how  to  fight."  He  laid  great 
stress  on  both  factors.  He  was  determined  that  the 
First  should  be  as  steeled  to  the  one  as  it  was  well 
trained  in  the  other.  The  news  that  came  from 
the  British  front  was  not  cheering.  Sir  Douglas 
Haig  had  just  issued  his  appeal  to  his  men  to  die  in 
their  tracks  before  Bethune ;  and  happily,  in  keeping 
with  British  tradition,  the  appeal  was  answered  in 
the  deed,  according  to  General  Bullard's  principles, 
even  as  his  own  men  were  to  answer  it  when  the  time 
came. 

The  order  for  the  First  to  move  came  on  April 
17th,  and  the  way  that  we  were  to  carry  it  out  was  of 
Itself  a  test  of  whether  or  not  we  were  ready  for 


OUR  FIRST  OFFENSIVE  215 

action  in  the  sense  that  General  Foch  meant;  for  he 
does  not  allow  divisions  any  time  to  learn  lessons 
of  war  en  route  to  the  front  when  he  makes  one  of 
his  combinations.  An  American  division  is  not  only 
twenty-seven  thousand  human  beings  with  estab- 
lished standards  of  human  locomotion  and  food  con- 
sumption; it  is  guns  and  wagons  and  horses  and 
motor  trucks,  with  many  units  of  men  and  trans- 
port, each  complete  in  itself  which  must  be  up  on 
time. 

For  such  business  typists  are  required  at  division 
headquarters.  Every  unit  must  have  its  written 
order,  specifically  stating  the  hour  when  it  is  to  move, 
the  route  or  routes  it  is  to  take  and  its  destination, 
where  accommodations  must  be  ready.  You  may 
take  a  map  and  with  marching  tables  work  out  the 
movement  in  theory;  but  if  the  division  is  not  trained 
the  result  will  be  distraction  for  the  staff  and  worse 
for  the  troops  when  night  comes.  The  First  did 
not  know  where  it  was  going  into  the  line  or  when; 
only  that  it  was  to  move  forward  to  a  given  destina- 
tion. 

The  orchard  where  a  battery  of  guns  had  been 
parked  yesterday  was  empty  now.  The  infantry- 
men had  put  on  their  packs,  fallen  in  and  marched 
away,  leaving  the  villages  to  the  inhabitants;  motor 
trucks  had  appeared  in  front  of  the  chateaux  for  the 
officers'  baggage;  the  maps  on  the  billiard  tables 
were  packed;  and  generals  and  colonels  had  gone  in 
their  cars,  leaving  silent  the  halls  which  had  re- 
sounded with  urgent  steps.  Twenty-seven  thousand 
men  had  departed  with  an  automatic  time-table  fa- 
cility,  leaving  no  litter  behind.     Another  division 


2i6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

might  march  in  to  take  their  place,  with  the  same 
absence  of  confusion. 

As  the  First  approached  the  battle  area,  it  kept 
to  the  winding  roads  between  the  great  main  roads, 
which  were  thus  left  free  for  the  traffic  that  sup- 
ported the  troops  at  the  front,  or  for  sudden  emer- 
gencies. Unit  commanders  of  troops  and  transport 
had  maps  of  their  routes,  and  military  police  at  the 
cross  roads  controlled  traffic  and  were  supposed  to 
give  further  directions.  The  procession  of  men, 
guns,  horses  and  motors  spent  the  night  in  the  vil- 
lages assigned  quite  as  a  traveler  settles  in  an  hotel 
where  his  room  is  ordered  in  advance;  and  the  next 
day  all  were  on  the  move  again  for  another  stage  of 
the  journey,  which  brought  us  to  the  points  where 
we  should  learn  what  the  French  army  commander 
was  to  do  with  us.  An  unseasonable  snowstorm  laid 
a  white  blanket  on  the  fields  and  blew  wet  and  chill 
in  the  men's  faces;  but  there  was  no  straggling. 

You  thought  of  the  First  as  some  great,  single 
organism,  many-footed,  many-wheeled,  with  all  parts 
articulated.  All  was  methodically,  professionally, 
done  to  the  lay  eye  with  officers,  however,  taking 
notes  on  mistakes  when  certain  requisites  were  not 
on  hand  or  there  were  misunderstandings  due  to  the 
difficulties  of  liaison  in  introducing  an  American  di- 
vision into  an  active  French  army  dependent  upon 
French  supplies.  With  the  exception  of  wine,  our 
men  were  receiving  the  regular  French  rations. 
This  was  a  factor  of  importance  in  staff  councils, 
considering  that  an  army  marches  on  its  stomach 
and  stomachs  have  not  yet  been  internationalized — 
an  improvement  which  may  come  with  the  League  of 


OUR  FIRST  OFFENSIVE  217 

Nations.  The  French  gave  us  too  much  bread  and 
too  few  vegetables.  We  wanted  more  sweets  and 
fats  and  coffee  to  the  American  taste  in  place  of  the 
French  "  pinard."  We  lacked  French  expertness  in 
cooking  the  French  canned  "  Willy  "  from  Argentine 
which  we  called  "  monkey  meat."  General  Pershing 
saw  to  it  that  our  quartermasters  supplemented  the 
French  ration  with  articles  which  were  necessary  for 
keeping  an  American  fighting  man  in  trim. 

French  officers  came  and  went  from  our  new  di- 
vision headquarters  as  we  rested  in  sound  of  the 
guns  and  waited  on  orders.  When  the  orders  came, 
the  First  had  the  sense  of  relaxation  and  disappoint- 
ment of  the  man  who  after  waiting  in  a  dentist's 
reception  room  to  have  a  tooth  out  is  told  to  come 
to-morrow.  The  First  was  not  going  into  a  counter- 
attack. It  was  not  to  make  a  charge,  leaving  half  of 
its  numbers  on  the  field  in  a  few  hours'  swift  action. 
It  was  going  into  an  active  sector  opposite  Mont- 
didier  at  the  nose  of  the  German  salient,  which, 
however,  was  to  be  change  enough  from  Toul  to  hold 
its  impatience  from  any  mutinous  outbreak  until  we 
took  Cantigny. 

Here,  as  elsewhere  along  the  new  battle  front, 
the  German  beast  had  come  to  a  stop,  growling,  In 
face  of  resolute  French  resistance.  Neither  side  had 
undertaken  to  dig  any  regular  line  of  trenches.  We 
were  in  virgin  battle  ground,  in  notable  contrast  to 
the  seamed  and  threshed  fields  of  the  Somme  and 
Verdun.  Black  circles,  from  shell-bursts,  spattered 
the  fields  of  young  wheat.  Villages  beyond  the  bil- 
leting area,  In  the  active  zone,  with  house  doors  open 
and  no  one  Inside  had  a  more  deserted  aspect  than 


21 8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

if  they  were  in  ruins;  for  you  had  an  idea  that  chil- 
dren ought  to  be  playing  in  the  streets  and  their 
mothers  going  about  the  household  work,  until  a 
burst  of  shell  fire  made  you  comprehend  why  all  the 
inhabitants  had  fled. 

The  guns  had  a  lot  to  do  yet  before  they  dupli- 
cated the  swath  of  destruction  of  the  old  line.  It 
takes  an  amazing  number  of  shells  just  to  level  one 
church.  That  chateau  with  a  single  breach  in  its 
walls  from  a  six-inch  would  have  to  come  down  with 
time  as  the  Germans  warmed  to  their  work,  and 
the  adjacent  homes  would  be  laid  in  heaps  mixed 
with  splinters  of  the  household  furniture,  if  the  new 
line  were  established  long  enough. 

Were  we  beginning  the  war  over  again  in  a  fresh 
theater  or  was  the  theater  to  keep  moving?  The 
very  instinct  of  the  armies  seemed  to  express  the 
thought  that  it  would  keep  moving.  Stalling,  in 
the  old  sense,  had  ceased  for  the  time  being  on  the 
Western  front.  Attack  would  meet  attack,  offensive 
would  answer  offensive,  until  the  decision  came. 
Something  that  confirmed  the  idea  was  in  the  atti- 
tude of  the  men  of  our  army.  Once  they  were  pre- 
pared for  action  they  would  not  be  content  with 
nibbling  trench  raids  and  limited  objectives. 

The  Germans  were  scattering  their  shell  fire  as 
if  they  had  not  yet  made  up  their  minds  what  should 
be  their  targets.  "  Dead  Man's  Curve  "  or  "  Death 
Valley  "  had  not  yet  come  into  the  lexicon  of  local 
references  as  places  where  you  must  be  consistently 
on  guard.  The  positions  of  the  French  batteries  re- 
flected the  action  of  a  gathering  force  which  in  open 
maneuver  had  checked  the  German  wave. 


OUR  FIRST  OFFENSIVE  219 

"  We  may  move  to-morrow,"  had  evidently  been 
the  prompting  thought  in  the  gunners'  minds,  in- 
stead of  elaborately  digging  in  to  settle  down  to 
permanent  positions.  Three  batteries  in  echelon 
along  a  valley  between  a  road  and  forest  had  an 
aspect  of  defiance.  If  the  German  guns  concentrated 
on  these  batteries,  their  gunners  had  some  shelter 
in  the  edge  of  the  woods,  where  they  would  remain 
until  the  storm  passed  unless  the  German  infantry 
were  attacking,  when  they  would  immediately  meet 
storm  with  storm.  There  was  an  aspect  of  mobility, 
of  elasticity,  of  readiness  for  change,  as  if  armies 
which  had  been  tied  down  to  stationary  warfare 
for  three  years  did  not  want  to  return  to  their 
shackles. 

The  front  consisted  only  of  scattered  men  in  the 
rifle  pits  which  they  had  dug.  Thus,  rehef  for  the 
infantry  as  well  as  for  the  artillery  was  a  more  tick- 
lish matter  than  in  a  settled  sector;  and  this  made 
our  French  mentors  as  solicitously  attentive  as  they 
had  been  the  first  time  we  went  into  the  trenches. 
Our  regimental  and  battalion  commanders  first 
scouted  the  ground  which  we  were  to  occupy.  Then 
battalion  and  battery  and  company  commanders 
joined  their  French  "  opposites  "  at  the  front  and 
familiarized  themselves  with  all  the  details  of  their 
future  responsibilities.  One  night  two  guns  of  the 
American  battery  moved  out  and  took  the  place  of 
two  guns  of  a  French  battery,  which  made  the  bat- 
tery half  American.  On  the  morning  of  the  third 
day,  the  batteries  were  all  American.  In  the  same 
way,  platoon  commanders  crawled  out  to  the  rifle 
pits  before  they  led  their  platoons  into  position.    On 


220  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  morning  of  the  third  day  the  front  line  was  all 
American.  "  Taking  over  "  had  been  accomplished 
without  the  Germans  being  any  the  wiser,  if  increase 
of  fire  on  their  part  was  to  be  taken  as  an  indication. 
Again  the  French  instructors  said  pleasant  words. 
There  could  be  only  one  more  lesson,  that  of  an 
attack  in  force,  before  the  First  must  be  declared  a 
graduate  pupil. 

Our  hospital  reports  were  sufficient  proof  that  we 
had  a  stiffer  business  in  hand  than  the  Toul  sector. 
The  Montdidier  salient  must  be  active  from  the  very 
fact  that  it  was  not  an  established  line  and  that 
neither  side  had  any  intention  that  it  should  become 
one.  The  guns  of  both  sides  were  prodigal  of  fire. 
Villages  in  the  combat  zone  were  gradually  tumbling 
down  over  the  cellars  that  became  the  refuge  of  all 
concerned.  A  good  deal  of  digging  was  required  in 
order  to  have  a  minimum  of  exposure ;  but  the  front 
still  remained  "  open  "  in  the  sense  that  we  attempted 
no  trench  lines  for  enemy  aviators  to  photograph 
for  the  information  of  enemy  artillery.  It  was  a 
crafty  business  of  hide-and-seek  and  searching,  har- 
assing fire,  thanks  to  our  restless  initiative. 

The  outpost  in  a  rifle  pit  so  constructed,  or  a 
shell  crater  so  transformed,  as  to  protect  him  pretty 
well  from  anything  but  a  direct  hit  by  a  shell,  had  to 
take  the  weather  and  events  as  they  came  while  he 
faced  the  German  army  with  mobile  infantry  sup- 
ports at  his  back.  On  chill,  rainy  nights  of  spring 
he  must  get  what  protection  he  could  from  his  shelter 
half  which  seems  as  sumptuous  as  a  mansard  roof  by 
comparison  when  you  lack  a  shelter  half. 

It  was  easy  for  him  to  lead  a  pious  life,  but  not 


OUR  FIRST  OFFENSIVE  221 

a  comfortable  one  or  one  free  from  solicitude  and 
suspicion.  If  he  were  of  an  imaginary  or  a  pessi- 
mistic nature  he  had  food  for  reflection.  He  might 
play  safe  and  sit  tight  and  not  attract  the  enemy's 
attention;  but  that  is  not  the  way  to  gain  confidence 
in  yourself  and  mastery  over  the  enemy,  and  it  was 
not  the  way  of  our  soldiers,  whether  they  were 
armed  with  rifles  or  with  machine  guns.  They  were 
looking  for  something  to  shoot  at,  and  shot  at  it 
on  all  occasions  with  an  accuracy  which  the  German 
Staff  might  note  for  future  reference.  We  made 
raids  and  repulsed  raids  and  went  through  all  the 
grinding,  wearing  and  costly  routine  under  new  con- 
ditions, until  the  chance  came  for  the  First  to  "  go 
over  the  top  "  in  earnest. 

The  original  plan  was  for  a  more  extensive  attack 
than  actually  took  place.  With  the  First  in  the 
center  and  a  fresh  French  division  on  either  flank, 
we  were  to  drive  ahead  for  two  days  to  gain  the 
heights  of  Montdidier  and  relieve  the  pressure  on 
the  British.  Orders  were  issued  and  preparations 
were  begun  to  be  ready  for  this  offensive  on  the 
25th  of  May.  Having  no  regular  trenches  in  the 
front  line,  jumping-off  trenches  must  be  made.  Our 
men  dug  a  trench  two  miles  long  and  three  feet  deep 
in  one  night  and  another  on  the  second  night,  which 
were  so  designed  that  the  enemy  would  mistake  both 
as  being  for  defensive  purposes.  All  this  labor  was 
for  nothing.  Soldiers  are  used  to  such  disappoint- 
ments, when  a  shifting  military  situation  forces  one 
of  those  changes  of  mind  which  are  inevitable  when 
the  enemy  has  the  initiative  and  you  have  to  act  upon 
your  information  about  his  plans. 


222  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

But  the  High  Command  allowed  us  a  consolation 
offensive  for  the  28th  of  May,  which  was  to  be  our 
very  own.  We  were  to  take  the  town  of  Cantigny, 
which  was  almost  as  gratifying  a  prospect  as  that  of 
taking  Mont  Sec  in  the  Toul  sector.  Cantigny  sat 
on  a  hill,  which  is  an  unusual  characteristic  for  a 
French  town.  Infantrymen  in  our  rifle  pits  were 
almost  as  sick  of  the  sight  of  it  as  the  whole  division 
had  been  of  Mont  Sec.  In  fact,  the  First  was  weary 
of  having  the  enemy  look  down  on  it  scornfully  from 
any  high  ground. 

Our  own  party!  A  real,  sure  enough  party! 
What  conferences  at  Headquarters!  What  a  zest 
in  all  the  discussions !  How  long  should  we  make 
the  artillery  preparation?  What  should  be  its  char- 
acter ?  The  word  liaison,  which  took  the  place  of  co- 
ordination in  our  army  lexicon  in  France,  presided 
over  the  councils.  The  detailed  orders  for  our  first 
little  offensive  would  make  a  good-sized  volume. 
We  were  in  the  mood  of  a  young  lawyer  trying  his 
first  case;  of  a  young  author  reading  the  proof  of 
his  first  book;  a  young  engineer  building  his  first 
bridge.  We  determined  that  we  would  think  of 
everything  and  that  we  would  make  everything  very 
clear  in  the  instructions.  Our  artillery,  which  was 
sufficiently  popular  with  the  infantry  to  be  cheered 
by  the  "  doughboys  "  as  the  guns  passed,  meant  to 
retain  its  high  reputation  by  the  support  it  gave  the 
men  who  went  "  over  the  top."  It  would  bear  down 
all  opposition  with  its  blows;  or,  if  it  did  not,  the 
French  tanks  were  to  assist  in  looking  after  machine- 
gun  nests. 

Barrages  were  charted  and  the  firing  programme 


OUR  FIRST  OFFENSIVE  223 

so  specifically  arranged  that  no  gunner  could  go 
wrong  and  no  battalion  or  company  or  platoon  com- 
mander could  fail  to  know  what  he  should  expect 
from  the  guns.  The  system  of  runners  and  signals 
was  worked  out  with  infinite  care,  in  order  that  the 
command  might  be  in  touch  with  all  the  units.  We 
imagined  ourselves  in  the  place  of  the  Germans 
in  order  to  anticipate  the  character  of  the  Ger- 
man response,  and  visualized  all  sorts  of  contin- 
gencies. 

Reconnaissances,  which  must  be  made  in  order  that 
those  who  were  responsible  for  the  plans  should  be 
perfectly  familiar  with  the  terrain,  were  difficult. 
The  German  had  the  whole  area  of  operation  within 
the  range  of  many  batteries.  He  pounded  it  every 
night  by  way  of  showing  us  that  we  were  not  alone 
in  our  desire  to  keep  the  sector  active.  Staff  officers 
who  went  out  to  get  first-hand  knowledge  of  the 
ground,  dodged  from  crater  to  crater  between  shell- 
bursts  with  a  keen  appreciation  of  what  life  was  like 
at  the  front. 

The  men  who  went  over  the  top  were  to  carry 
two  hundred  and  twenty  rounds  of  rifle  ammunition, 
two  hand  grenades  and  one  rifle  grenade,  two  can- 
teens filled  with  water,  one  shelter  half,  four  sand 
bags,  one  flare  and  one  shovel  or  one  pick,  and  they 
were  to  wear  their  blouses  and  to  leave  their  blankets 
behind.  They  must  have  enough  food  and  water 
to  remain  for  two  days  in  their  newly-won  positions; 
for  there  could  be  no  thought  that  we  should  not 
gain  our  objective.  If  we  did  not,  the  28th  Infantry, 
which  was  to  have  the  honor  of  making  the  attack 
because  it  was  fresh  and  had  its  turn  to  go  into  the 


224  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

line,  could  never  come  back  with  any  grace  to  face 
the  other  regiments  which  envied  the  28th 
its  opportunity.  Particularly  it  would  not  have 
wanted  to  face  the  i8th,  which  did  much  drudgery 
and  valuable  service  in  its  support. 

Once  more  the  men  of  the  First  had  to  dig  jump- 
ing-off  trenches;  and  the  shell  craters  where  the 
trenches  ran  across  the  fields  are  sufficient  evidence 
of  the  character  of  that  task  in  the  darkness  before 
the  morning  of  the  attack.  But  the  trenches  had  to 
be  dug  and  there  was  nothing  to  do  but  to  keep  on 
the  job  until  they  were  dug  in  an  hour's  spirited 
effort.  Those  who  labored  were  in  a  mood  befitting 
the  occasion.  When  a  soldier  was  knocked  over  by 
a  shell,  as  he  viewed  the  crater  by  the  light  of  another 
burst,  after  he  was  back  on  his  feet  he  remarked : 
"  Thanks  for  your  help;  but  don't  dig  so  broad  and 
keep  on  the  line !  " 

A  shell  that  burst  in  a  dump  of  flares  and  grenades 
in  the  St.  Eloi  Wood  blew  up  the  lot.  Here  was  one 
of  those  emergencies  which  could  not  be  foreseen. 
Shell  fire  or  no  shell  fire,  the  stock  must  be  replaced, 
and  those  whose  business  it  was  to  look  after  the 
matter  kept  hustling  until  it  was. 

As  the  third  German  offensive  had  started  that 
day.  May  27th,  on  the  line  from  north  of  Soissons  to 
west  of  Rheims,  and  the  Germans  were  eager  to 
know  General  Foch's  plans,  they  increased  the  activ- 
ity in  the  neighborhood  of  Cantigny  by  three  raids. 
One  penetrated  our  line  and  took  a  prisoner.  This 
would  never  do.  The  prisoner  might  reveal  our 
plans  for  the  morning.  We  set  out  to  recover  him 
and  had  an  affair  with  his  captors  in  a  wheat  field 


OUR  FIRST  OFFENSIVE  225 

that  won  him  back.  By  this  time  he  must  have  been 
feeling  very  self-important. 

Meanwhile,  the  26th  Infantry,  having  repulsed 
a  raid  on  our  right,  responded  by  a  counter-raid 
which  took  prisoners,  which  is  further  evidence 
that  the  First  was  very  wide  awake  in  front  of 
Cantigny  on  the  night  of  May  27th.  Incidentally, 
I  should  like  to  make  it  clear  that  I  saw  nothing  of 
the  action  of  the  next  day  and  depend  upon  reports 
and  upon  observation  of  the  ground  after  the  attack. 

The  lieutenants  who  were  to  go  over  the  top 
hardly  needed  to  carry  any  maps  in  order  to  know 
the  programme  assigned  to  their  platoons.  The  de- 
tails were  burned  in  their  brains.  Silent  as  shadows 
in  the  darkness,  the  men  moved  out  to  their  posi- 
tions. All  the  Stokes  motars  and  37  mm.  guns  of 
the  1 6th  Infantry  and  a  half  company  of  engineers 
and  two  other  machine-gun  companies  of  the  2nd 
Machine-gun  Battalion  were  to  assist  the  28th. 

For  days  before  the  attack  the  heavy  guns  had 
avoided  drawing  attention  to  it  by  shelling  Cantigny. 
At  4:45  on  the  morning  of  the  attack  the  artillery 
began  an  adjustment  fire  in  which  each  battery  had 
a  fifteen-minute  interval;  and  at  5:45  all  the  guns 
began  the  real  preparation.  Now  the  heavies  gave 
Cantigny  all  they  could  send  and  the  little  town  was 
revealed  to  the  eye  of  the  waiting  infantry  in  lurid 
flashes.  The  crashes  and  the  screams  and  the  bursts 
at  the  end  of  the  screams  in  their  unorchestrated, 
monstrous  roar  were  like  hundreds  of  other  artillery 
preparations  while  the  minutes  ticked  off  to  zero 
hour,  and  the  enemy,  aroused  now  to  the  fact  that 
an  attack  was  coming,  began  to  respond. 


226  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

At  6:45  in  the  early  dawn  of  May  28th,  as  has 
happened  many  times  before,  the  line  of  figures 
started  up  from  the  earth  and  began  their  advance. 
The  formations  were  the  same  as  those  of  the  prac- 
tice maneuvers,  and  the  movement  was  equally  pre- 
cise as  it  kept  to  the  time-table  of  the  barrage.  Each 
unit  was  doing  its  part,  the  tanks  as  they  nosed  their 
way  forward  doing  theirs.  Our  shelling  of  the  lower 
end  of  the  town  suddenly  ceased;  and  then  our  men 
were  seen  entering  the  town  exactly  on  time.  Head- 
quarters waited  on  reports,  and  they  came  of  prison- 
ers taken,  of  the  further  progress  of  units — all  ac- 
cording to  the  charts.  We  had  passed  through  the 
town;  we  were  mopping  it  up;  and  we  had  reached 
our  objective  in  front  of  the  town.  Our  losses  to 
that  point  were  less  than  a  hundred  men,  with  three 
hundred  and  fifty  prisoners.  A  small  offensive  as 
offensives  go,  but  our  own,  and  our  first. 

Going  over  the  top  in  a  frontal  attack  had  been  al- 
most tame,  it  was  so  like  practice  exercises.  The 
fact  that  our  practice  exercises  had  been  so  sys- 
tematically applied,  that,  indeed,  we  had  done  every- 
thing in  the  book,  accounted  for  the  perfect  success 
of  Cantigny.  There  was  a  glad,  proud  light  in  the 
eyes  of  our  wounded.  They  had  been  hit  in  a  "  real 
party."  Nobody  could  deny  that  they  were  graduate 
soldiers  now.  But  there  was  to  be  the  reaction  which 
always  comes  with  limited  objectives  when  you  do 
not  advance  far  enough  to  draw  the  enemy's  fangs — 
his  guns.  Upon  the  roads  along  which  men  must 
pass  to  bring  up  supplies,  upon  every  point  where 
men  must  work  or  men  or  wagons  pass,  upon  the 
command  posts,  he  turns  the  wrath  of  his  resent- 


OUR  FIRST  OFFENSIVE  227 

ment  over  the  loss  of  men  and  ground,  and  in  his 
rage  concentrates  most  wickedly,  most  persistently 
and  powerfully  upon  the  infantry  which  is  trying  to 
organize  the  new  frontal  positions. 

The  German  artillery  would  show  this  upstart 
American  division  its  mistake  in  thinking  that  it 
could  hold  what  it  had  gained.  Eight-inch  shells 
were  the  favorites  in  the  bombardment  of  our  men, 
who  now  had  Cantigny  at  their  backs  as  they  dug  in, 
while  showers  of  shrapnel  and  gas  added  to  the 
variety  of  that  merciless  pounding  that  kept  up  for 
three  days.  We  suffered  serious  casualties,  now; 
but  we  did  not  go  back,  and  we  took  revenge  for  our 
casualties  in  grim  use  of  rifle  and  machine  gun  which, 
with  the  aid  of  prompt  barrages,  repulsed  all  counter- 
attacks, until  the  Germans  were  convinced  of  the 
futility  of  further  efforts. 

Later,  when  I  did  the  usual  thing  of  rising  at 
three  in  the  morning  in  order  to  go  over  our  positions 
at  Cantigny,  the  sector  had  become  settled  in  its 
habits  though  still  active.  Part  of  the  walls  of  the 
chateau  which  had  had  a  single  hit  when  I  first  saw 
it  were  still  standing;  all  the  surrounding  village 
was  in  ruins  almost  as  complete  as  if  it  had  been  in 
the  Ypres  salient. 

From  the  front  line  I  watched  the  early  morning 
"strafe"  of  the  German  guns;  the  selected  points 
of  "  hate,"  here  and  there  along  the  front  receiving 
a  quarter  of  an  hour's  attention,  while  the  crushed 
remains  of  Cantigny  were  being  subjected  to  addi- 
tional pulverization.  We  held  the  line,  but  with  cun- 
ning men  hidden  in  the  earth.  You  hardly  knew 
of  their  presence  unless  you  stumbled  on  them. 


228  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

After  the  German  gunners  went  to  breakfast  you 
might  shp  into  the  Company  P.  C.  in  Cantigny.  The 
captain  in  command  there  was  perfectly  snug,  thank 
you.  Guests  were  welcome  if  they  did  not  stand 
about  the  doorway  to  draw  fire.  Let  them  come 
below  and  have  a  drink  of  cider  from  the  big  casks 
which  were  in  the  safest  cellar  in  town. 

No,  you  might  not  go  forward  into  the  eastern 
edge  of  the  town.  That  was  a  positive  invitation 
to  German  batteries  to  open  up.  The  captain  knew 
his  positions  and  knew  his  business,  and  he  did  not 
want  any  firing  in  that  neighborhood  at  the  time. 
Later,  you  might  learn  that  three  individuals  were 
important  enough  to  be  shelled  if  they  tried  to  walk 
along  the  road  back  to  Villers  Tournelle,  where  a 
major  who  had  helped  to  take  Cantigny  had  coffee 
and  corned  beef  hash  ready  for  breakfast.  Every- 
body you  met  at  the  front  had  a  certain  air  of  pro- 
prietorship in  the  sector;  and  back  at  headquarters 
the  thoroughbred  veteran  chief  of  staff  and  all  the 
other  officers  of  that  much-schooled  First  received 
you  with  their  habitual  attitude,  which  seemed  to  say, 
"  Any  suggestions  or  criticisms?  We  are  always  lis- 
tening— but,  understand,  please,  we  are  the  First 
Division." 


XVIII 

A   CALL  FROM  THE   MARNE 

A  river  that  for  the  second  time  held  the  world's  attention — ^The 
Germans  third  offensive — A  smash  through  for  ten  miles  the 
first  day — Effect  on  Allied  morale — Americans  called  on  to 
block  the  road  to  Paris — The  Third  Division  of  regulars  were 
ready — The  stream  of  refugees — The  incomparable  French 
spirit — The  veteran  Second  Division  arrives — An  endless  train 
of  motor  lorries  crowded  with  doughboys — The  "  joy-ride  "  of 
war — The  night  that  "  Les  Americains  "  meant  much  to  France. 

Probably  I  received  more  comfort  in  the  last  four 
days  of  May  from  an  old  peasant  a  hundred,  miles 
back  of  the  lines  than  from  anything  I  heard  at 
Headquarters.  He  came  out  of  his  house  to  watch 
an  American  chauffeur  put  on  a  tire  and  he  was  a 
sage  citizen  of  an  old  country. 

"  I  hear  they  are  going  to  have  another  battle  on 
the  Marne,"  he  said.  "  We'll  stop  the  barbarians 
there.  La,  la!  We  always  stop  them  there.  It 
does  not  take  you  long  to  put  on  a  tire,  does  it? 
You  travel  fast,  but  you  eat  lots  of  dust.     La,  la !  " 

The  winding  kindly  Marne,  anything  but  a  river 
of  Mars  in  its  domesticated  course  through  rich 
fields  tilled  to  the  water's  edge,  was  again  holding 
the  world's  thought  in  connection  with  a  great  mili- 
tary decision.  On  the  morning  of  the  28th 
our  First  Division  had  taken  Cantigny,  and  on 
the  previous  morning  the  Germans  had  begun  their 
third  or  Aisne  offensive.     We  Allies  had  been  plan- 

229 


230  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ning  not  to  be  surprised  again;  but  facing  the  Ger- 
mans were  tired  French  troops  with  a  few  reserves, 
and  also  a  tired  British  corps  which  had  been 
brought  from  the  British  front  to  a  quiet  sector  to 
rest. 

After  a  preliminary  bombardment  of  unprece- 
dented volume,  which  saturated  battery  positions 
and  vital  points  with  gas  to  a  depth  of  six  miles 
and  more,  the  Germans  broke  through  all  the  de- 
fenses of  this  old,  powerfully  intrenched  line  for  a 
depth  of  as  much  as  ten  miles  In  a  single  day.  It 
is  said  that  Ludendorff  meant  this  attack  as  prelim- 
inary to  one  elsewhere;  but  when  he  found  how 
slight  was  the  resistance  which  It  developed  he  com- 
mitted himself  to  pressing  his  advantage. 

Even  Americans  could  not  get  much  consolation 
out  of  our  little  offensive  at  Cantigny  In  this  critical 
period.  While  our  men  of  the  First  were  digging  In 
to  hold  the  single  village  which  we  had  taken,  the 
Germans  were  taking  villages  by  the  score.  With 
their  infiltrating  machine-gun  units,  using  the  same 
tactics  as  In  PIcardy  In  March  but  improved  by  ex- 
perience, they  seemed  to  be  moving  according  to  a 
schedule  which  was  reflected  on  a  battle  line  drawn 
further  south  on  the  maps  at  Headquarters  by  every 
bulletin.  Apparently,  they  were  having  a  procession 
of  victory.  Their  communiques  were  purposely  and 
dramatically  brief  in  their  announcement  of  immense 
gains  in  ground,  prisoners  and  material. 

The  German  people  were  thus  informed  that  their 
staff,  as  usual,  was  winning  according  to  plans.  Well 
might  the  German  armies  in  their  swift  progress  find 
fresh  strength  and  fervor  in  their  confidence  that  the 


A  CALL  FROM  THE  MARNE       231 

break  was  near.  They  crossed  the  Vesle;  they  took 
Fere-en-Tardenois ;  they  crossed  the  Ourcq;  they  ap- 
proached the  Marne  and  Chateau-Thierry;  they  had 
Soissons  and  were  pressing  forward  on  the  plateau 
beyond  Soissons  towards  Paris. 

When  would  this  drive  be  stopped?  Where  were 
our  reserves?  After  four  years  of  fighting  when  all 
the  armies  of  Europe  were  war-weary,  the  soldiers 
of  all  were  peculiarly  susceptible  to  the  effect  of  such 
an  operation  repeating  the  success  of  that  of  March. 
A  supreme  article  of  faith  of  all  generalship  is  to 
use  the  revival  of  the  spirits  of  your  tired  men  in  a 
moment  of  victory  to  impose  your  will  upon  any 
enemy  who  is  accordingly  depressed. 

How  far  was  this  applying  to  the  results  in  the 
region  from  the  Marne  to  the  Aisne  during  the  last 
days  of  May?  Where  we  had  held  our  line  for  four 
years,  the  enemy  had  broken  through  our  defenses 
and  the  defenders  were  in  flight.  How  easy  to  say, 
"  We  ought  to  stop  them  at  the  Vesle !  "  or,  "  Wc 
shall  hold  them  on  the  heights  of  the  Ourcq !  "  when 
you  stood  before  a  map  at  Headquarters  without 
visualizing  the  situation  in  the  field. 

A  great  enemy  concentration,  successful  in  its  first 
assault  beyond  expectation,  was  succeeded  as  it 
became  tired  by  fresh  divisions  of  Germans,  and 
they,  as  they  became  tired,  by  others  drawn  from  the 
immense  reserve  held  ready  for  such  an  operation. 
We  must  hurry  our  reserve  units  from  different 
points  of  the  semicircle.  The  German  reserves 
were  driven  straight  down  the  half-diameter.  They 
had  a  land  cleared  of  population  for  their  move- 
ment.    We  were  hampered  and  depressed  by  the 


232  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

refugees  who  had  to  fly  before  the  enemy  from  home 
in  the  late  spring  season,  when  the  wheat  and  the 
grass  were  near  the  harvesting  period  and  the 
gardens  beginning  to  yield  produce.  Confusion  in 
communications  and  information  confounded  the 
plans  for  dispositions  in  defense. 

You  might  find  grains  of  comfort  where  you  could, 
but  there  were  the  bulletins.  You  might  talk  opti- 
mistically and  set  your  jaw,  but  the  words  sounded 
hollow.  The  honors  seemed  for  the  present  with 
German  strategy  and  tactics.  It  took  a  man  with  a 
big,  strong  vision  or  the  faith  of  the  old  peasant  not 
to  feel  the  moral  effect  of  the  swift  progress  of  the 
German  army. 

America  might  be  sending  over  five  hundred  thou- 
sand troops  in  June;  but  of  what  use  were  these 
partly  trained  men  if  they  were  too  late?  It  was 
trained  men  who  were  needed  on  the  Marne  and  on 
the  road  to  Paris.  At  the  time,  there  were  no  Ameri- 
can forces  between  Cantigny  and  the  Toul  sector. 
The  only  Americans  visible  behind  the  new  battle 
area  were  officers  who  passed  along  the  roads  in 
automobiles,  going  and  coming  on  various  errands. 
They  might  be  of  official  importance,  but  they  were 
of  no  combat  significance.  And  the  Allies  were  ask- 
ing if  we  could  do  anything  in  this  crisis.  Our  po- 
tentiality had  become  the  decisive  force  in  their 
reckoning.  We  were  the  real  strategic  reserve  of 
the  Allied  cause. 

After  the  four  pioneer  divisions,  the  Third  (4th, 
7th,  30th  and  38th  regiments),  commanded  by 
Major  General  Joseph  Dickman,  was  the  most  ad- 
vanced in  training.    Although  it  had  not  yet  received 


A  CALL  FROM  THE  MARNE       233 

its  own  artillery  it  was  about  to  go  into  a  quiet 
sector  under  the  support  of  French  artillery.  It 
looked  forward,  with  the  same  intense  curiosity  of 
other  divisions,  to  its  first  experience  in  dugouts  and 
under  shell  fire  in  the  actual  presence  of  the  enemy. 
On  the  29th  came  a  change  of  orders  which  sent  fire 
along  the  veins  of  every  man  in  the  division.  It  was 
to  have  a  short  cut  to  learning.  The  decision  having 
been  made  to  send  it  to  the  Marne,  the  next  thing 
was  the  means  of  taking  it  to  its  destination.  Our 
Idea  at  home  that  France  is  a  small  garden  of  a 
country  is  correct  in  comparison  with  our  own;  but 
when  you  have  to  move  divisions  from  one  part  to 
another,  the  distances  are  impressive. 

For  motion-picture  purposes,  instantly  the  order 
came  every  soldier  of  the  Third  ought  to  have 
rushed  out  of  his  billets  on  to  the  road.  In  that 
event,  they  would  have  had  a  four-  or  five-day  march 
in  prospect.  The  French  proposed  to  bring  them 
to  the  Marne  quicker  than  that  by  trains,  though 
the  provision  of  trains  was  a  problem,  too.  When 
I  saw  the  first  detachments  marching  away  from  their 
billets  for  entraining  at  village  stations,  the  sight 
of  their  sturdy  ranks  was  very  convincing.  They 
might  have  had  no  artillery,  but  they  had  rifles  and 
they  knew  how  to  shoot.  Give  them  a  line  to  hold 
and  any  German  force  would  soon  realize  that  it 
had  met  an  obstacle. 

The  motorized  machine-gun  battalion  did  not 
have  to  wait  on  trains.  It  had  already  gone,  envied 
of  all  the  units  of  the  division.  Of  all  the  knights 
and  soldiers  and  flying  columns  which  have  hastened 
along  the  roads  of  France  in  answer  to  a  call  from 


234  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  Marne,  none  ever  made  a  more  dramatic  move- 
ment than  this  battalion,  with  the  eyes  of  the  men 
shining  at  the  prospect  of  being  in  the  "  big  party." 
They  would  not  have  to  wait  on  ceremony.  Their 
cars  could  go  right  up  to  the  firing  zone.  And  ma- 
chine gunners  were  always  needed.  The  battalion 
was  certain  of  seeing  action. 

"Our  headquarters  will  be  at  Conde!"  division 
headquarters  said.  Conde-en-Brie  was  just  south  of 
the  bend  in  the  Marne  at  Dormans. 

The  next  day,  bound  toward  the  Marne,  the  first 
sign  of  the  battle  which  I  saw  along  the  road  some 
seventy  miles  south  of  the  Marne  was  the  vanguard 
of  refugees.  I  had  only  a  glimpse  of  them  from  the 
swiftly  passing  car,  but  it  was  a  glimpse  full  of  sug- 
gestion and  one  that  will  never  fade  from  memory. 
A  buxom  young  woman  was  sitting  in  a  big  hay 
wagon  with  seven  or  eight  children  of  ages  from  four 
to  eight  years,  I  should  say,  around  her,  while  a 
small  boy  of  eleven  or  twelve  was  proudly  driving 
the  horses.  She  must  have  been  either  a  school  mis- 
tress or  a  good  Samaritan  who  had  gathered  these 
young  ones,  secured  a  wagon  and  made  an  early  start 
for  their  sake.  They  were  smiling  in  their  first 
great  adventure  away  from  home,  probably  because 
she  herself  was  smiling. 

Other  refugees  who  had  wagons  now  came  on  in 
a  procession — the  same  that  we  have  known  through 
many  descriptions.  They  had  traveled  day  and 
night,  keeping  to  the  main  road,  as  the  farther  to 
the  rear  they  were,  the  less  they  would  interfere  with 
army  traffic.  Now  they  seemed  safe  far  from  the 
sound  of  guns  and  the  scenes  of  rearguard  resist- 


A  CALL  FROM  THE  MARNE       235 

ance.  They  stopped  under  the  shade  of  the  trees 
and  rested,  while  their  horses  grazed.  Those  who 
had  cows  milked  them,  and  this  meant  food  for  the 
young  children. 

When  we  are  advancing  the  war  is  always  beings^, 
won    and    when    we    are    retreating    the    war    is 
always  being  lost  at  the  etappes.    Thus,   rumors, 
which   always   make   bad  news,   were   plentiful   at 
Sezanne. 

"  You  will  not  reach  Conde,"  said  an  officer  at 
Sezanne.  "  The  Germans  are  already  there.  They 
are  on  their  way  to  Paris.  It's  terrible  for  France 
now,  but  it  will  be  all  right  for  France  in  the  future. 
You  cannot  kill  France." 

His  conclusion  was  correct,  if  his  premises  were 
not.  By  the  token  of  the  smiling  children  in  the  hay 
wagon  and  of  all  the  refugees,  in  tenacity  and  im- 
mutability of  race  you  could  not  kill  France.  Let 
conquerors  come  and  overrun  France  and  settle  in 
France,  and,  in  a  generation  or  two,  they  would  take 
on  the  character  of  the  French,  I  think,  from  the 
very  fact  that  their  roots  drew  nourishment  from  the 
soil  of  France. 

"  There  was  an  old  peasant  down  the  road,"  I  told 
the  officer,  "  and  he  said " 

The  officer  was  too  truly  French  not  to  respond 
to  that.  The  air  of  confusion  due  to  the  reports  of 
broken  regiments,  the  sight  of  the  passing  refugees 
and  the  pressure  of  the  forces  falling  back  on  new 
bases,  suddenly  cleared  for  him.  He  caught  the  old 
peasant's  perspective. 

'*  We'll  stop  them  on  the  Marne !  We  always 
do!  "  he  said;  and  he  had  a  new  heart  for  his  prob- 


236  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

lems  in  a  town  which  had  suddenly  become  near 
enough  to  the  front  to  assume  importance. 

The  road  from  Sezanne  to  Montmirail,  which  pre- 
viously had  had  little  concern  with  military  trans- 
port, had  other  signs  than  refugees — among  them 
some  batteries  of  guns  in  rest — which  indicated  that 
the  settled  conditions  of  nearly  four  years  back  of 
the  old  front  line  had  been  stirred  by  orders  which 
looked  towards  threatening  possibilities.  With  the 
railroad  from  Chateau-Thierry  to  Epernay  out  of 
commission,  other  railroads  must  care  for  suddenly 
increased  traffic.  Motor  trucks  which  had  had  their 
station  far  back  of  the  present  battle  line  must  have 
new  bases.  Aeroplanes,  which  had  flown  from  aero- 
dromes now  in  German  hands,  had  come  to  rest  in 
level  fields  which  would  be  the  site  of  future  aero- 
dromes. 

Montmirail,  which  had  been  a  quiet  town  en  route 
from  Paris  to  Chalons  and  to  Vitry-le-Frangois,  was 
feeling  the  hot  breath  of  war  for  the  first  time  since 
September,  19 14.  Ambulances  arriving  from  the 
front  crowded  the  hospitals  with  wounded,  for  the 
Germans  were  not  far  away  across  the  hilly,  wooded 
country  which  stretched  up  to  the  narrow  valley  of 
the  Marne.  An  officer  of  the  Third,  who  was  at 
a  French  army  headquarters,  said  that  the  Third's 
headquarters  were  at  Conde  and  its  motor  machine- 
gun  battalion  had  gone  to  Chateau-Thierry.  On  the 
way  to  Conde,  French  army  transport  going  and 
coming  had  the  road  to  themselves.  There  seemed 
an  end  of  the  refugees.  Those  left  north  of  the 
Marne  could  not  cross  now;  those  to  the  south, 
with  a  few  scattered  exceptions,  were  already  away. 


A  CALL  FROM  THE  MARNE       237 

The  villages  were  deserted.  There  would  be  no 
lack  of  room  for  billets  that  night.  All  the  country- 
side was  quiet,  and  the  sound  of  the  guns  forward 
indicated  a  small  volume  of  fire.  A  squadron  of 
cavalry  with  saddles  on  and  riders  lounging  were 
indicative  of  readiness  for  one  kind  of  emer- 
gency. 

The  only  sign  of  Americans,  except  billeting  of- 
ficers waiting  for  their  guests  in  the  villages,  was  a 
company  at  a  railroad  station  where  it  had  just  been 
detrained  and  awaited  orders  to  march.  I  found 
General  Dickman  with  his  staff  at  Conde.  He  had 
an  immense  empty  chateau  at  his  disposal,  besides 
his  automobile  and  maps,  but  no  food  or  baggage. 
As  fast  as  detachments  of  his  division  arrived  they 
were  put  at  the  disposition  of  the  French. 

The  Germans  were  across  the  Marne,  but  not  in 
great  force,  and  the  French  High  Command,  which 
knew  its  American  soldiers  now,  could  trust  to  Amer- 
ican riflemen  and  the  French  75's  playing  on  the 
bridges  to  do  the  work  required.  It  hardly  seemed 
likely  that  the  enemy  would  deepen  his  salient  across 
the  river  by  pushing  farther  south.  Surely  he  would 
broaden  it  by  swinging  towards  Paris,  along  the 
river.  Any  crucial  fighting  that  was  to  ensue  would 
take  place  in  that  direction. 

On  May  29th,  the  Second,  a  trench-tried  division 
with  its  experienced  artillery,  had  been  under  orders 
to  march  from  the  Chaumont-en-Vexin  area,  where  it 
was  billeted,  to  the  Beauvais  area.  The  movement 
was  to  begin  at  six  on  the  morning  of  May  31st. 
This  order,  given  on  the  third  day  of  the  Germans' 
Marne  drive,  suggests  that  thus  far  the  French  High 


238  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Command  did  not  think  the  situation  serious  enough 
to  require  the  services  of  the  Second. 

At  five  o'clock  on  the  evening  of  the  30th,  a 
French  officer  appeared  with  an  order  that  the  in- 
fantry of  the  division  would  start  for  Meaux  in 
trucks  at  five  o'clock  the  next  morning.  At  midnight 
another  order  came  saying  that  the  remainder  of  the 
division  would  be  prepared  to  move  by  rail  at  five- 
thirty.  This  change  of  plan  was  hardly  conducive 
to  sleep  on  the  part  of  officers  on  the  night  of  May 
30th-3ist.  New  detailed  orders  must  be  issued  and 
forwarded  by  courier  to  all  units.  As  the  infantry 
would  be  separated  from  their  kitchens  for  two  days, 
a  supply  of  rations  had  to  be  issued.  Some  units  had 
to  march  six  miles  to  their  entraining  points.  A  mul- 
titude of  small  problems  must  be  worked  out  during 
the  night  to  prevent  any  hitches;  but  all  were  sur- 
mounted, and  the  next  morning,  while  the  rest  of  the 
division  waited  for  trains,  the  infantry  climbed  into 
motor  trucks  and  the  long  procession  started  across 
country. 

There  is  no  sight  more  impressive  behind  the 
lines  in  a  crisis  than  such  a  movement.  A  continuous 
roar  stretches  along  the  road,  rising  in  stentorian 
crescendo  as  one  truck  after  another  looms  out  of 
the  dust  and  forges  past,  all  keeping  their  intervals, 
all  going  at  the  same  speed.  It  is  the  roar  that  takes 
the  place  of  the  clatter  of  cavalry  and  the  double 
quick  of  the  infantry,  which  were  sent  in  the  old  days 
to  stiffen  your  breaking  line  or  to  add  weight  against 
the  enemy's  line  that  was  breaking. 

The  cumulative  effect  of  such  a  seemingly  endless 
column,  with  its  passing  groups  of  soldier  faces,  is 


A  CALL  FROM  THE  MARNE       239 

extraordinary.  It  has  the  fascination  of  trained 
man-power  in  rapid  motion;  it  appeals  to  the  imag- 
ination as  the  swift  and  dramatic  transfer  of  a 
striking  force.  The  men  like  it — this  "  joy-ride  "  of 
war.  They  have  something  of  the  feeling  for  the 
truck  that  the  mounted  infantryman  has  for  his 
horse.  When  they  debuss  to  go  into  battle,  some- 
thing of  the  impulse  of  the  motor  column's  move- 
ment is  imparted  to  their  spirits.  Given  roads 
enough  and  trucks  and  gasoline  enough,  and  a  gen- 
eral may  move  corps  about  at  will  to  suit  his  plans. 
He  may  fool  the  enemy  aviators  by  a  procession  of 
trucks  taking  troops  one  way  by  day  and  counter- 
marching them  a  hundred  miles  back  to  their  start- 
ing-point under  the  cover  of  darkness. 

From  their  trucks  the  infantry  of  the  Second,  thir- 
teen thousand  men  in  all,  saluted  the  villages  and  the 
countryside  as  they  ran  past,  eating  enough  dust  en 
route,  as  one  of  them  said,  to  cake  his  stomach  into 
a  mud  pie.  They  had  read  the  communiques.  Thef 
knew  that  all  this  gasoline  and  transportation  were 
not  being  expended  upon  them  in  order  that  they 
make  the  acquaintance  of  other  families  of  the  great 
trench  rat  tribe  in  some  quiet  sector. 

The  only  orders  which  they  had  was  that  a  French 
officer  at  the  Town  Hall  would  tell  them  where  to  go 
when  they  arrived  at  Meaux;  but  although  the  officer 
was  there,  the  instructions  were  not.  During  the 
time  required  to  send  infantry  from  Chaumont-en- 
Vexin  to  Meaux,  all  kinds  of  changes  may  take  place 
on  the  battle  line.  Where  a  division  was  needed  in 
the  morning  it  may  not  be  needed  in  the  afternoon; 
or  it  may  be  needed  in  quite  a  different  place  than  it 


240  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

was  in  the  morning.  At  all  events,  the  Second  was 
in  striking  distance  of  the  battle  line;  it  was  strategic 
reserve  subject  to  call. 

Somewhere  in  the  upper  world  which  they  call  the 
High  Command,  decision  waited  upon  developments; 
and  the  Second  was  ordered  to  go  into  billets  north- 
east of  Meaux.  They  could  not  be  allowed  to  re- 
main sitting  in  valuable  motor  trucks  for  any  length 
of  time.  The  jfirst  detachments  to  arrive  had  de- 
bussed  and  shaken  off  the  dust,  and  the  staff  was 
disposing  them  in  billets,  when  an  order  came  for  the 
division  to  take  up  a  position  between  Gandelu  and 
Martigny  where  another  attack  was  expected.  All 
the  men  who  had  arrived  were  once  more  started  on 
their  way.  Later,  at  midnight,  when  the  last  of  the 
trucks  was  in,  a  French  officer  appeared  with  an  army 
order  saying  that  the  division  would  concentrate  at 
Montreuil-aux-LIons  by  a  forced  march.  There  was 
no  time  for  any  nice  arrangements  of  road  schedules. 
Somebody  had  to  take  the  map  and  lay  out  routes 
and  hurry  instructions  by  runner  to  all  the  units, 
wherever  they  were. 

The  confusion  at  the  rear  was  at  its  height,  and 
the  time  was  night  after  the  Germans  had  made 
further  gains.  Rumors  grow  in  the  night  and  hasten 
the  steps  of  those  in  retreat.  The  marching  columns 
in  the  darkness,  intensified  by  the  heavy  shade  of 
the  trees,  must  make  their  way  past  ambulances  and 
motor  trucks  that  shot  by  in  ruthless  possession  of 
the  road,  and  among  refugees  and  their  carts  and 
batteries  and  broken  elements  of  troops  and  peri- 
patetic cavalry.  Out  of  the  darkness  as  our  troops 
were  identified,  came  cries  of  "  Les  Americains !  "  in 


A  CALL  FROM  THE  MARNE       241 

the  husky  voices  of  French  drivers,  the  weary  voices 
of  men  who  had  fought  their  hearts  out  without  food 
or  sleep,  the  faint  voices  of  the  wounded  and  the 
tremulo  of  old  women  and  little  children  among  the 
refugees.  *'  Les  Americains !  "  meant  more  that 
night  than  they  ever  had  in  France. 


XIX 

HOLDING  THE  PARIS  ROAD 

The  Germans  reach  Chateau-Thierry — The  motor  machine-gun 
unit  of  the  Third  Division  that  was  the  first  American  de- 
tachment to  enter  the  battle  of  the  Marne — Marshaling  the 
Second  Division  into  battle — A  Chief  of  Staff  who  welcomed 
difficulties— The  finished  products  of  General  Pershing's  train- 
ing, tanned,  lean,  confident,  marching  into  battle  after  thirty-six 
hours  on  the  road — The  two  brigades  of  Marines  and  regulars 
— A  battalion  that  marched  fifty  miles — And  took  the  trail 
again  after  a  few  hours'  sleep. 

By  daybreak  of  June  ist  the  infantry  of  the  Second 
was  beginning  to  arrive  at  Montreuil,  where  the 
news  received  at  headquarters  in  the  schoolhouse 
indicated  that  the  Germans  were  still  gradually  ad- 
vancing. Generally,  the  situation  was  confused  in 
detail,  though  distinct  enough  in  the  necessity  of  all 
force  possible  being  hurried  forward. 

The  9th,  which  was  the  first  regiment  of  the 
Second  to  reach  Montreuil,  after  being  all  night  on 
its  feet,  was  sent  immediately  to  take  up  a  position 
covering  the  Paris  road  near  the  village  of  Le 
Thiolet  as  support  for  the  French  troops,  who  were 
somewhere  in  front  in  contact  with  the  enemy.  If 
further  attacks  overpowered  the  French,  they  were 
to  fall  back  through  our  lines  in  retreat;  and  our 
business  was  to  stick.  Before  night,  we  were  to  have 
all  our  infantry  either  in  a  support  line  on  either  side 
of  the  Paris  road  or  in  immediate  reserve. 

242 


HOLDING  THE  PARIS  ROAD       243 

The  Germans  had  taken  Chateau-Thierry  and  the 
crest  over  which  the  Paris  road  runs,  the  village  of 
Vaux  beyond  it,  and  a  commanding  portion  of  Hill 
204  on  the  north  bank.  Hill  204  overlooks  the 
town  and  both  banks  of  the  river  for  miles  on  either 
side  of  the  town,  and  the  main  road  from  Mont- 
mirail,  which  sweeps  down  from  the  southern  wall 
of  the  Marne  valley  to  the  suburb  of  Chateau- 
Thierry  on  the  southern  side  of  the  river.  This 
tightened  the  enemy's  grip  on  the  northern  bank  and 
gave  him  observation  of  the  southern  bank. 

Meanwhile,  the  7th  Motorized  Machine-gun 
Battalion  of  the  Third  had  literally  ridden  into 
battle  in  a  fashion  in  keeping  with  their  most  vivid 
anticipation.  Theirs  had  been  the  first  American 
blood  shed  in  the  second  Marne  battle.  It  hardly 
seemed  that  they  had  had  time  to  reach  Chateau- 
Thierry  from  Montmirail  before  their  wounded 
were  returning.  Interspersed  and  mixed  with  the 
French,  and  under  French  direction,  they  would  be 
the  last  to  make  any  claim  in  keeping  with  the 
reports  which  were  spread  about  their  playing  a  lone 
Horatius  at  the  bridge.  They  had  used  their  ma- 
chine guns  as  they  had  been  taught  to  use  them  in 
covering  the  retreat  of  the  French  across  the  bridge, 
before  it  was  blown  up,  and  afterwards  in  keeping 
the  Germans  from  any  attempt  at  a  crossing. 

When  I  visited  them  some  days  later,  they  had 
their  guns  well  placed  on  the  southern  river  bank 
facing  German  machine  guns  on  the  other.  They 
had  the  suburb  all  to  themselves  except  for  the 
intervals  of  heavy  German  shelling  and  bursts  of 
machine-gun  fire  from  German  aviators  raking  the 


244  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

streets.  One  service  that  they  had  performed  by 
their  deed  was  to  convince  the  French  that  the  Third 
Division,  although  it  was  raw  and  without  battle 
experience,  was  a  most  gallant  organization,  if  the 
machine  gunners  were  any  criterion  of  the  mettle  of 
the  other  units. 

But  this  is  wandering  away  from  the  Second  and 
from  the  afternoon  of  June  ist  when  Major  General 
Bundy  sat  in  a  schoolroom,  where  staff  officers  used 
children's  desks  for  writing  orders,  smoking  his  cigar 
with  the  calmness  of  a  man  who  was  used  to  the 
difficulties  of  moving  27,000  men,  7,400  animals 
and  1,000  wagons  into  an  active  battle  sector  in 
answer  to  a  hurry  order,  while  his  chief  of  staff 
could  apply  all  that  he  had  learned  at  that  school  in 
the  wheat  fields  of  Kansas  plus  all  that  he  had 
learned  in  France.  The  more  troubles  he  had,  the 
more  this  C.  O.  S.  was  in  his  element.  He  thrived 
on  the  unexpected.  To  officers  who  came  rushing 
in,  he  looked  up  with  a  certain  zest  for  more  trouble. 

"Any  rats?     I  eat  rats!  "  quoth  the  bull  terrier. 

He  had  supposed  that  the  divisional  artillery  was 
coming  by  train  only  to  learn  that  eighteen  of  the 
trains  which  were  to  bring  the  artillery  and  other 
transport  had  been  canceled  and  all  concerned  told 
to  go  by  road.  Runners  were  sent  out  to  order 
forced  marches  and  to,  give  instructions  as  to  des- 
tinations. Thus,  the  Second  must  wait  upon  its  artil- 
lery when  at  any  moment  it  might  have  to  withstand 
a  strong  attack.  To  arriving  units,  or  to  their  com- 
manders who  preceded  them,  the  C.  O.  S.  clicked  off 
orders  locating  ammunition  dumps,  dressing  stations 
and  routes  for  transport  with  a  celerity  which  indi- 


HOLDING  THE  PARIS  ROAD       245 

cated  absolute  confidence  in  his  mission  on  earth.  If 
he  made  mistakes — well,  he  made  them  promptly. 
He  did  not  take  hours  in  thinking  them  out.  If  he 
corrected  them  promptly,  when  he  recognized  them, 
this  was  so  much  gain  in  time. 

Meanwhile,  French  aeroplanes  flew  over  the 
schoolhouse  dropping  message  cylinders;  and  these 
and  other  bulletins  coming  in  from  the  front  told  us 
that  the  enemy  was  pressing  in  the  region  of  Torcy 
and  farther  north  in  order  to  broaden  their  salient, 
but  not  yet  seriously  in  front  of  our  new  lines,  which 
did  not  mean  that  he  might  not  do  so  at  any  moment 
as  a  part  of  his  tactical  plan. 

Our  eagerness  made  up  for  our  lack  of  experience. 
Every  order  given  showed  that  we  were  not  thinking 
in  rearguard  terms.  Our  ammunition  dumps  and  all 
our  depots  and  stations  were  being  pushed  forward 
with  a  view  to  coming  to  grips  with  the  enemy.  The 
spirit  in  the  schoolroom  was  in  keeping  with  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  last  of  the  battalions  of  the  Second 
to  arrive,  which  was  passing  by  the  schoolhouse  in 
the  late  afternoon.  These  men  had  not  had  any- 
thing like  sleep  in  the  last  thirty-six  hours.  They 
were  tired,  but  they  were  not  tired  "  about  the  eyes," 
and  those  weary  Frenchmen  who  had  been  fighting 
their  way  back  from  the  Chemin  des  Dames  were. 
*'  Fresh  troops !  "  as  a  French  oflScer  exclaimed  in 
professional  appreciation.  We  had  not  been  fighting 
for  four  years.  A  good  night's  sleep  would  cure 
our  fatigue.  It  could  not  cure  that  of  the  veterans 
of  all  the  campaigns  from  the  Marne  to  the  third 
German  offensive.  We  were  young,  and  young  to 
war. 


246  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

The  men  in  the  battalion,  almost  without  excep- 
tion, were  under  thirty.  Their  faces  had  a  deeper 
tan  than  the  French,  an  American  Indian  tan.  Their 
features  were  sharper  than  European  features. 
Their  close-fitting  uniforms,  their  round  packs,  which 
included  blankets  and  outfit  in  a  single,  tightly-bound 
bundle,  leaving  the  limbs  and  arms  free,  as  for  blows, 
and  their  bodies  trained  down  to  muscular  leanness, 
suggested  a  mobile  compactness.  They  leaned  for- 
ward a  little  as  they  marched  as  if  to  get  a  grip  on 
the  road  and  to  be  nearer  to  their  goal.  They  were 
the  finished  products  of  General  Pershing's  training; 
formed  in  the  mold  that  he  had  set. 

But,  I  repeat,  their  most  striking  characteristic 
in  those  surroundings  was  their  youth  and  the  energy, 
the  drive,  the  impatience  of  youth.  Even  our  truck 
and  ambulance  drivers  were  young,  while  the  French 
drivers  were  middle-aged.  I  have  imagined  the  roar 
of  a  French  column  of  trucks  saying,  "  We  are  old 
at  war  and  wise  at  war!"  and  of  an  American 
column  saying,  "  We  are  young  and  we  want  to 
learn;  gangway  for  us!"  With  this  went  the 
masterfulness  of  youth  as  well  as  the  elasticity  of 
youth. 

I  recollect  how  a  company  of  this  battalion,  when 
it  halted,  sent  details  with  their  canteens  to  be  filled 
from  the  spout  of  the  blessed  flowing  village  well  of 
Montreuil;  and  how  they  bathed  faces  dusty  from 
the  march  and  truck  rides  in  the  basin,  and  their 
smiles  showed  their  good  teeth  which  they  had, 
thanks  to  American  dentistry.  It  does  not  seem 
right  that  a  soldier  should  not  have  good  teeth. 
They  are  a  symbol  of  strength  as  well  as  of  clean- 


HOLDING  THE  PARIS  ROAD        247 

liness.  I  suppose  that  a  man  whose  open  mouth 
reveals  decayed  slivers  may  shoot  as  straight  or  hold 
as  fast  under  shell  fire  as  any  other,  but  I  have  an 
idea  that  anyone  who  can  take  a  firm  grip  of  a  piece 
of  hard  bread  or  of  "  canned  willy  "  has  a  better 
grip  on  a  "  strong  point  "  against  an  attack. 

The  battalion,  taking  up  the  march  again,  became 
as  some  great  khaki  caterpillar  moving  on  the  white 
ribbon  of  road;  and  then  it  halted  again  and  passed 
out  of  sight  into  a  wood,  where  it  was  to  wait  in 
reserve  and  the  men  might  drop  on  the  soft,  warm 
earth  and,  in  want  of  their  rolling  kitchens,  eat  their 
rations  cold  and  afterward  stretch  themselves  in  a 
spell  of  lazy  talk  as  they  rested.  There  was  one 
who  said,  "  Well,  I  hope  that  I  won't  get  it  before 
I  see  Paris.  I  surely  do  want  to  see  Paris."  And 
then  he  dropped  off  in  the  sound  sleep  of  youth  from 
physical  fatigue. 

After  three  or  four  kilometers,  traffic  on  the  road 
ceased  and  it  lay  a  white,  straight  blaze  leading  on 
into  the  unknown  in  the  late  afternoon  sun.  There 
was  scattered  gun  fire  from  one  side,  an  occasional 
shell-burst  in  answer  and  the  occasional  rattle  of  a 
machine  gun.  The  German  seemed  to  be  taking 
time  to  think  things  over  on  our  immediate  front. 
Drawn  by  the  vacant  road,  my  young  chauffeur 
would  have  run  right  on  into  the  German  lines  if 
left  to  himself.  When  the  burst  of  a  105  sent  up 
a  spout  of  earth  near  us  he  was  overjoyed. 

"Golly!  I've  seen  the  holes,  but  this  was  the 
first  time  I  ever  saw  a  hole  made.  Quick  work, 
eh?  "  he  said. 

He  wanted  to  go   forward  to  more  bursts;  but 


248  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

some  patches  of  French  blue  in  a  clump  of  trees 
covering  the  road  with  a  machine  gun  were  sugges- 
tive of  how  far  we  had  gone  past  the  turning  we 
should  have  made.  This  silence,  this  seemingly  un- 
inhabited space,  was  in  a  live  battle  sector  at  that 
moment;  but  let  points  of  German  field  gray  break 
out  of  cover  to  gain  still  more  ground  in  their  knit- 
ting crocheting  process  of  advance,  and  all  the 
clumps  of  woods  would  have  awakened  with  vicious 
and  murderous  voices. 

A  turning,  further  back  on  the  south  side  of  the 
road,  brought  you  to  the  headquarters  of  the  3rd 
Rrigade  under  Brigadier  General  Lewis  and  one  on 
the  north  to  the  headquarters  of  the  4th  or  Marine 
Corps  Brigade  under  Brigadier  General  Harbord. 
I  am  mentioning  both  brigades  particularly,  as  the 
part  of  the  4th,  or  Marine  brigade,  was  to  be 
exploited  in  a  way  that  might  give  the  impression 
that  the  3rd  had  not  been  active.  When  I  had  last 
seen  General  Lewis  he  had  been  Provost  Marshal  in 
Paris.  Now  he  had  been  given  a  brigade.  His  op- 
portunity had  come.  In  the  farmhouse  which  was 
his  headquarters,  he  showed  not  the  least  sign  of 
fatigue  and  his  hand  was  upon  his  brigade  in  a  way 
that  brings  confidence  in  leadership. 

Brigadier  General  Harbord  had  come  to  France 
as  Major  Harbord.  As  Chief  of  Staff,  he  had  been 
General  Pershing's  right-hand  man  in  the  little  room 
in  the  War  Department  in  organizing  the  departure 
of  the  expedition  and,  later,  in  building  up  the  organ- 
ization in  France.  Two  weeks  previously  he  had 
been  "  sent  to  troops,"  as  the  saying  goes.  Both 
he  and  General  Lewis  were  to  win  another  star  on 


HOLDING  THE  PARIS  ROAD       249 

their  shoulders  in  the  next  month  and  to  be  given 
command  of  divisions. 

Thus,  the  brigades  were  established  in  their  posi- 
tions on  a  twelve-mile  front  on  the  night  of  June  ist. 
Our  men  had  dug  themselves  shelters  in  their  sup- 
port line  and  the  orders,  which  they  hardly  required, 
were  to  get  what  rest  they  could,  whether  in  billets 
or  out  under  the  sky  where  they  unrolled  their 
blankets  and  shelter  halves.  The  French  expected 
to  use  them  for  a  counter-attack  to-morrow. 

In  the  gathering  dusk  after  the  long  summer  day 
the  5th  Machine-gun  Battalion  arrived.  It  was  not 
motorized,  and  had  traveled  on  its  own  feet  some 
fifty  miles  through  suffocating  clouds  of  dust,  which 
takes  the  marching  strength  out  of  men.  The  heads 
of  the  horses  which  drew  the  little  carts  were  down 
and  the  heads  of  the  men  who  led  the  horses  and 
of  the  gunners  behind  the  carts  were  down,  all  keep- 
ing along  at  that  grudging,  yet  continuing  gait  which 
resolves  every  ounce  of  effort  and  all  thought  into 
mechanical  leg  movement.  For  it  is  not  the  fighting 
which  is  the  hardest  part  in  many  instances;  rather, 
it  is  the  strain  of  sleeplessness  and  physical  effort  in 
reaching  the  scene  of  action. 

The  weary  individual  pedestrian  counts  the  miles 
to  the  goal,  with  anticipation  an  invisible  strand 
drawing  him  on.  The  soldier,  who  does  not  know 
where  he  is  to  stop,  has  the  advantage  of  the  mo- 
mentum of  the  whole  to  keep  him  going.  He  is  one 
particle  of  a  mass.  When  the  mass  moves,  he  moves. 
The  rhythm  of  steps  and  comradeship  give  impulse 
to  his  steps.  When  the  word  was  passed  along  that 
at  last  the  battalion  had  reached  its  destination,  you 


250  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

appreciated  that  then  the  men  would  realize  how 
tired  they  were.  Any  place  on  the  ground  would  do 
for  a  bed;  any  place  of  rest  off  the  dusty  road. 

I  mention  this  battalion  because  of  what  was  to 
happen  to  it  before  morning.  At  midnight,  the 
French  had  reports  of  a  gap  in  their  lines  at  Colombs 
and  asked  if  we  could  fill  the  gap.  The  23rd 
Infantry  was  our  divisional  reserve.  Its  com- 
manding officer,  Colonel  Malone,  was  sent  for  to 
come  to  Headquarters.  When  the  question  was  put 
to  him  he  said,  "Yes,  sir!  "  and  called  for  a  field 
clerk  and  dictated  the  orders  for  the  march  and  the 
dispositions  with  a  celerity  that  delighted  the  French 
general.  Thus  the  gap  was  filled;  and  with  the 
weary  23rd  went  a  weary  battalion  of  Marines  and 
that  very  weary  5th  Machine-gun  Battalion.  There 
was  real  heroism  in  the  way  those  machine  gunners 
received  the  news. 

They  made  a  few  caustic  remarks,  and  some 
started  humming  the  what-do-we-care  tune  to  read- 
just their  perspective  to  the  change;  and  then  they 
began  treading  the  road  again.  Civilized  will-power 
is  a  great  thing.  It  carried  the  machine  gunners  to 
their  new  positions.  If  they  did  not  get  a  shot  at 
the  German  to  pay  for  this  hike — well,  their  opinion 
of  the  Staff  would  not  be  improved. 

The  day  had  recorded  further  fierce  fighting 
around  Rheims  and  in  the  neighborhood  of  Villers- 
Cotteret  and  in  the  region  on  the  Second's  left  flank. 
There  had  been  no  further  effort  on  the  part  of  the 
Germans  who  were  across  the  Marne  at  Dormans 
to  extend  their  lodgment  on  the  south  bank,  where 
they  were  content  to  hold  what  they  had  gained, 


HOLDING  THE  PARIS  ROAD       251 

leaving  the  river  between  them  and  the  French  at 
other  points.  "  We  shall  stop  the  barbarians  at  the 
Marne!  "  as  the  old  peasant  had  said. 

Not  all  of  the  Third  Division's  infantry  had  re- 
ported, even  on  the  second  day  after  the  motorized 
machine-gun  battalion  had  been  in  action.  One  bat- 
talion had  been  delayed  by  a  train  wreck.  Units  that 
arrived  were  already  being  interspersed  with  the 
French  and  some  were  already  engaged.  One  regi- 
ment and,  later,  a  battalion  of  another  were  to  be 
sent  across  the  Marne  at  Nogent,  where  we  held 
both  banks  with  an  intact  bridge,  to  assist  in  hold- 
ing the  enemy  from  pressing  farther  toward  Paris. 
As  a  division,  the  Third  was  in  a  process  of  decen- 
tralization which  was  to  leave  General  Dickman 
subject  to  varying  vicissitudes  of  authority  which 
included  French  troops  as  well  as  portions  of  his 
own  under  his  direction  at  times. 


XX 

BELLEAU   WOOD   AND   VAUX 

The  stifiFening  effect  of  our  presence  on  the  French  troops — A 
crisis  in  ammunition  promptly  met — Under  the  watchful  eyes 
of  the  Germans — Belleau  Wood  and  the  Marines — A  wood 
bristling  with  machine  guns — It  is  a  tradition  and  our  nature 
to  "go  to  it" — How  the  Marines  "went  to  it"  in  Belleau 
Wood — And  took  Bouresches — The  regulars,  in  rivalry,  go  a 
little  too  far — Cautiousness  not  the  besetting  sin  of  our  sol- 
diers— A  hunt  of  man-hornet  nests — Our  men  refuse  to  con- 
sider that  rules  of  the  German  General  Staff — A  bunch  of 
wildcats! — The  3rd  Brigade  of  regulars  cleans  up  Vaux. 

Our  entry  into  the  Marne  battle  had  been  dramatic, 
and  the  French  have  a  strong  sense  of  the  dramatic. 
A  reference  in  the  French  communique  to  the  part 
which  our  machine  gunners  had  played  at  Chateau- 
Thierry  appeared  when  the  outlook  was  most  critical 
and  just  before  the  German  offensive  slowed  down. 
Word  of  mouth  news,  which  supplements  official 
news,  traveling  fast  under  the  censorship,  when  every 
ear  is  open  and  every  tongue  has  only  one  theme, 
only  increased  the  moral  effect  of  the  part  we  played. 
Every  peasant  who  saw  the  motor  machine-gun 
battalion  of  the  Third  flying  along  the  road  told 
other  peasants,  who  told  still  others.  Our  soldiers 
in  box  cars  bound  toward  the  Marne  were  agents  of 
a  reassuring  publicity.  By  the  morning  of  June  ist 
America  was  in  evidence  in  marching  troops,  in 
motor-truck  columns  and  dispatch  riders  all  the  way 

252 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX       253 

from  Montmirall  to  Paris.  French  officers  and  dis- 
patch riders  and  motor-truck  drivers  were  the  heralds 
of  our  advent  along  all  the  roads  leading  to  the 
front.  At  last  America  was  seen  and  felt.  She 
was  no  longer  associated  with  stable  trench  sectors, 
but  had  become  a  mobile  factor  in  defense  against  a 
threatening  and  powerful  offensive. 

When  a  column  of  motor  trucks  carrying  Ameri- 
can soldiers  passed  through  Paris,  although  the  fact 
was  not  published  in  the  press,  all  Paris  knew  it  in  a 
few  hours.  The  number  of  trucks  and  soldiers  had 
been  doubled  by  the  time  the  report  reached  the 
suburbs,  and  it  was  further  multiplied  as  it  reached 
the  provinces  through  travelers  and  over  the  tele- 
phone. Bordeaux  and  Marseilles,  Tours  and  Dijon, 
all  France  had  this  tidbit  which  appealed  to  popu- 
lar imagination  when  Paris  was  supposed  to  be  in 
danger. 

Where  the  effect  told  most  was  with  the  French 
troops.  Those  in  front  of  the  Second  Division, 
which  was  still  in  a  support  position  on  June  2nd, 
spoke  in  no  uncertain  terms  of  the  stiffening  effect  of 
our  presence.  As  I  have  said,  it  gave  them  resolu- 
tion in  holding  the  strong  German  attack  that  the 
Germans  made  that  day  in  an  effort  to  continue  their 
advance.  Our  machine  gunners  assisted  in  its  re- 
pulse. The  French  were  driven  back  at  points  al- 
most to  our  lines,  but  pride  of  race  and  of  veterans 
in  the  presence  of  a  young  force  had  its  influence 
in  strengthening  a  determination  that  deterred  them 
from  leaving  the  task  to  us. 

The  night  of  June  2nd  thus  found  us  secure  in  the 
positions  we  had  taken  up  on  the  night  of  the  ist, 


254  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

with  all  our  communications  being  organized  and 
transport,  engineers,  signal  corps,  and,  best  of  all, 
our  guns,  arriving.  The  camouflage  of  the  gun  bar- 
rels was  hidden  under  layers  of  dust,  and  horses 
drooped  and  men  nodded  from  snatches  of  sleep  on 
the  jouncing  carriages  and  caissons,  but  they  were 
ready  to  go  into  positions  and  begin  firing  when 
the  orders  came  for  immediate  action. 

When  it  was  found — an  unpleasant  fact  at  the 
time — that  our  artillery  and  the  French  artillery, 
too,  were  short  of  ammunition,  the  chief  of  staff 
of  the  Second  unloaded  trucks  carrying  small-arms 
ammunition  and  sent  them  to  bring  back  a  supply 
which,  it  was  said,  was  particularly  reserved  for 
emergencies  by  General  Pershing's  order.  Was  not 
this  an  emergency?  The  chief  o^  staff  thought  so, 
and  has  not  yet  been  court-martialed  for  his  action. 
In  fact,  he  was  later  made  a  brigadier,  though  not 
for  purloining  the  C.-in-C.'s  ammunition.  Other 
things  in  his  career  during  the  month  of  June  were 
considered.  He  is  not  coy  in  his  relations  with  the 
enemy. 

On  the  3rd,  the  German  confined  his  attacks  for 
the  most  part  to  the  northward  of  us,  but  was  evi- 
dently feeding  in  machine-gun  groups  on  our  front 
with  a  view  to  future  mischief.  On  the  early  morn- 
ing of  the  4th,  we  took  over  from  the  French  a 
twelve-mile  front,  with  the  3rd  Brigade  holding 
from  Bonneil  to  well  across  the  Paris  road  and 
the  4th  from  its  left  to  the  west  of  Belleau  Wood. 
The  23rd  Regiment  and  the  Marine  battalion  and 
the  5th  Machine-gun  Battalion  which  had  been  sent 
to  fill  the  gap  at  Colombs  were  returned  to  the  divi- 


BELLE AU  WOOD  AND  VAUX       255 

sion,  which  now  became  a  united  family  holding  its 
own  sector.  We  might  do  as  we  pleased,  then,  in 
that  twelve  miles  of  battle  line,  with  no  reserves 
between  us  and  the  Marne;iand  this  meant  we  would 
not  leave  the  Germans  to  do  the  attacking. 

From  Hill  204  all  the  way  to  our  right  the  Ger- 
mans had  the  advantage  of  observation.  Our  roads, 
particularly,  were  under  the  watchful  eyes  of  German 
balloons.  German  aviators  scouted  our  positions  all 
too  freely.  I  saw  them  flying  so  low  over  our  in- 
fantry that  the  Iron  Crosses  on  their  wings  were 
visible  to  the  naked  eye.  They  dropped  bombs  in 
broad  daylight. 

The  country  is  uneven,  with  many  woods  and 
the  usual  open  fields  between  woods  and  villages.  In 
front  of  the  Marines  the  Germans  held  the  important 
tactical  point  of  the  village  of  Bouresches  and  the 
railroad  station,  and  they  had  filtered  into  the  ad- 
joining Belleau  Wood  and  around  it  as  an  ideal 
cover  for  machine-gun  nests.  This  Bouresches-Bel- 
leau  line  was  excellent  for  the  purposes  of  the  enemy 
if  they  were  to  stabilize  their  positions  and  cease  to 
advance,  or  as  a  jumping-off  place  for  continuing 
their  offensive. 

The  spirit  of  rivalry  between  the  3rd  (a  regular 
brigade)  and  the  4th  (the  Marines)  was  very 
pronounced.  No  regular  was  going  to  admit  that 
any  quarter-deck  soldier  was  in  his  class;  and  no 
Marine — he  considered  himself  as  belonging  to  a 
corps  d' elite — was  going  to  allow  any  impression  that 
he  was  not  a  little  better  than  any  regular  to  get 
abroad,  if  he  could  help  it.  Marine  officers  might 
not  have  had  the  schooling  in  tactics  of  the  regulars, 


256  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

but  being  plain  infantrymen,  with  no  expectation  of 
developing  into  Joffres  or  Hindenburgs,  they  con- 
sidered that  at  least  they  were  not  afraid  to  fight. 
People  had  said  that  the  Marine  Corps  was  an 
anachronism  and  ought  to  be  eliminated  from  our 
armed  forces.  Its  honor  and  future  were  at  stake 
there  before  Bouresches  and  Belleau  Wood.  If  it 
were  to  get  more  recruits  as  a  small  organization, 
which  is  hardly  accepted  by  the  army  and  not,  per- 
haps, altogether  by  the  navy  as  a  little  brother,  it 
must  be  worthy  of  those  recruiting  posters  at  home. 

A  Marine  colonel  fastened  the  globe  insignia  on 
the  collar  of  General  Harbord;  and  formally  made 
him  a  Marine.  The  General  said  that  he  was  as 
proud  as  if  they  had  given  him  the  Medaille  Mili- 
taire.  As  he  did  not  propose  to  leave  the  advantage 
of  tactical  positions  to  the  Germans  when  they  were 
nearer  Paris  than  they  had  even  been  before,  he 
proceeded  to  act  with  full  faith  in  the  capabilities  of 
his  brigade  and  its  restlessly  belligerent  manhood. 
One  of  the  Marine  regiments  had  come  to  France 
with  the  First  Division,  and,  as  I  have  already  men- 
tioned, had  been  demobilized  for  a  time  to  do  guard 
and  courier  duty.  The  other  had  had  long  training. 
Both  had  veteran  non-commissioned  officers,  and  no 
one  questioned  the  disciplined  and  soldierly  bearing 
of  every  platoon  in  the  brigade. 

On  the  4th,  the  first  day  that  they  were  in  the 
front  line,  the  Marines  repulsed  a  German  attack. 
At  dawn,  on  the  morning  of  the  6th,  the  second  day 
after  they  were  in  the  line,  they  made  an  attack  in 
conjunction  with  the  French  on  the  left  to  rectify 
the  line  in  the  direction  of  Torcy;  and  they  went 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX      257 

through  machine-gun  fire  and  shell  fire  to  their  ob- 
jectives, doing  it  all  according  to  pattern.  This 
might  have  been  enough  for  a  day's  work;  but  it  was 
only  an  introduction  to  what  was  to  follow. 

The  way  to  act  in  an  active  sector  was  to  be  active, 
according  to  General  Harbord's  idea ;  and  the  obvi- 
ous place  for  a  first  offensive  on  our  line  was  in 
front  of  the  4th  Brigade,  to  the  regret  of  the  3rd 
Brigade.  At  2  p.m.  an  order  was  typed  off  at  Bri- 
gade Headquarters  for  an  operation  beginning  at 
5  P.M.  which  was  to  take  both  Bouresches  and  Bel- 
leau  Wood.  There  was  a  brief,  raking  artillery 
preparation  of  the  wood  and  a  concentration  on 
Bouresches,  which  was  to  be  stormed  in  the  second 
phase  after  Belleau  had  been  won. 

In  the  name  of  the  months  that  they  had  drilled, 
of  the  hardships  endured,  of  the  wearisome  vigils 
of  a  harassing  trench  sector  and  of  their  corps,  the 
Marines  could  have  only  one  thought:  success. 
Senior  officers  could  not  consider  the  niceties  of  the 
craft  in  not  exposing  themselves.  They  must  put 
their  personal  weight  and  influence  into  this,  their 
first  attack.  Every  man  was  too  preoccupied  to 
think  of  risk.  With  the  jauntiness  of  parade,  and 
the  offensive  zeal  which  had  been  long  nursed  be- 
come a  burning  desire  set  on  the  goal  of  that  dark 
clump  of  trees  and  undergrowth  ahead  they  advanced 
into  the  wood. 

At  the  very  outset  they  met  machine-gune  fire;  and 
out  of  the  wood  after  they  were  in  it  came  the  per- 
sistent rattle  of  rifle  fire,  varied  by  veritable  storms  of 
machine-gun  fire.  Wounded  began  to  flow  back  down 
the  various  ravines.     Calls  came  for  Stokes  mortars 


258  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

from  the  hidden  scene  of  that  vicious  medley,  along 
with  the  report  that  Colonel  Catlin  had  been 
wounded  a  half-hour  after  the  attack  was  begun. 
The  machine-gun  positions  in  the  outskirts  of  the 
woods  had  been  taken;  but  they  were  only  the  first 
lot.  I  have  been  through  many  woods  where  Ger- 
man machine  gunners  had  ensconced  themselves,  and 
none  that  I  remember  afforded  better  positions  for 
defense  against  any  enemy  in  the  wood  or  against  one 
approaching  it  from  our  front. 

Not  only  was  the  undergrowth  thick,  but  there 
were  numerous  rocks  and  ravines  and  pockets,  all 
of  which  favored  the  occupant.  There  was  nothing 
new  in  the  system  which  the  Germans  applied,  and 
which  the  Allies  also  apply;  but  not  until  troops  go 
against  it  for  the  first  time  do  they  realize  its  char- 
acter. Its  formidability  is  dependent  upon  the  stout- 
ness of  heart  of  the  defenders,  their  craft  and  the 
number  of  their  guns.  With  the  thicket  so  dense 
that  it  prevents  a  man  being  seen  even  fifty  feet 
away,  a  weapon  with  a  range  of  three  thousand 
yards  is  easily  screened.  Each  gun  has  its  zone  of 
fire,  in  relation  to  the  others,  to  sweep  every  square 
yard  of  the  ground;  and  fire  is  hdd  until  it  will  have 
a  maximum  effect.  There  is  no  flanking  any  gun, 
when  the  supply  of  guns  is  sufficient,  for  hidden  guns 
are  waiting  to  turn  their  blasts  on  the  effort;  and 
guns,  furthermore,  are  placed  in  such  a  manner  as 
to  give  both  lateral  and  plunging  fire. 

Crafty  veteran  soldiers  might  have  decided,  as 
soon  as  they  had  developed  the  character  of  the  de- 
fenses, that  the  cost  of  going  on  was  too  high;  and 
a  veteran,  crafty  staff,  accepting  the  dictum  of  experi- 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX       259 

ence,  would  have  adopted  more  arduous  measures, 
involving  powerful  artillery  work,  for  accomplishing 
their  purpose.  Such  woods  as  these  had  been  many 
times  submitted  to  hurricanes  of  shells  that  had  up- 
rooted all  the  young  trees  and  left  only  the  limbless, 
slashed  trunks  of  old  trees  standing  before  they  were 
taken,  particularly  in  former  days  before  we  came  to 
open  warfare  tactics. 

When  they  could  locate  a  gun  our  men  concen- 
trated their  rifles  upon  it.  The  crackle  of  bullets 
passing  about  the  gunners'  heads,  even  if  they  were 
not  hit,  might  stop  them  from  firing;  but,  meanwhile, 
some  other  gun  was  cutting  the  twigs  around  the 
heads  of  the  marksmen.  The  wounded  crawled  back 
behind  rocks,  or  into  ravines,  or  to  any  place  where 
they  could  find  a  dead  space.  The  instinct  of  our 
men,  caught  in  such  a  mesh  of  fire  which  was  every 
minute  causing  a  casualty,  was  to  come  to  close 
quarters;  and  they  wanted  to  go  free  of  packs,  of 
blouses,  shirts  open,  rifle  in  hand,  with  their  faith  in 
their  bayonets.  Hot  cries  accompanied  the  flashing 
drive  of  the  cold  steel  through  the  underbrush. 
Many  bayonets  might  drop  from  the  hands  of  the 
men  who  were  hit,  but  some  bayonets  would  "  get 
there."     And  that  was  the  thing — to  get  there. 

We  have  always  fought  in  this  way.  It  is  tradi- 
tion and  our  nature.  "We  go  to  it!  "  as  we  say. 
German  gunners  ran  from  their  guns  in  face  of  such 
assaults;  others  tried  to  withdraw  their  guns;  others 
were  taken  in  groups  huddled  in  ravines  as  youth, 
transcendent  in  its  white  rage  of  determination,  bore 
down  upon  them  and  gathered  them  in  or,  again, 
drove  the  bayonet  home  into  gunners  who  stuck  to 


26o  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

their  guns  until  the  instant  that  forms  with  eyes 
gleaming  leapt  at  them.  Our  young  platoon  com- 
manders had  the  task  of  leading  all  to  themselves  in 
the  thickets  among  the  tree  trunks,  as  they  always 
have  in  such  fights,  while  senior  officers  wait  on  the 
result.  When  night  came  we  had  to  yield  some  of 
the  ground  which  we  had  taken  or  remain  without 
cover  in  the  face  of  the  blasts;  but  we  had  securely 
established  ourselves  in  a  portion  of  the  wood.  With 
captured  German  machine  guns,  men,  whom  we  could 
not  reach  with  food  and  water,  held  their  gains, 
taking  food  and  water  from  the  American  and  Ger- 
man dead. 

Although  the  first  phase  of  the  attack  had  not  been 
fully  accomplished,  it  was  determined  not  to  hold 
back  the  other  companies,  which  had  been  waiting 
under  shell  fire  that  only  aroused  their  eagerness  to 
advance,  from  undertaking  the  second  phase.  Theirs 
was  a  simpler  task  than  that  of  their  comrades  who 
had  stormed  the  wood.  Artillery  preparation  in 
clearing  the  way  was,  of  course,  more  serviceable 
against  a  village  than  against  a  wood,  and  neither 
machine  gun  nor  shell  fire  delayed  the  precision  of  the 
movement  across  the  open  into  the  village  where, 
with  the  avidity  of  their  zeal  and  the  supple  quick- 
ness of  their  litheness  and  youth,  and  in  the  elation 
of  their  first  experience  of  the  kind,  our  men  cleared 
the  cellars  of  Bouresches  of  all  Germans  in  hiding 
and  gained  their  objective.  Then  they  set  about  with 
equal  energy  preparing  protection  against  the  re- 
taliatory bombardment  which  was  bound  to  come. 
Bouresches  was  solidly  theirs  when  morning  came; 
and  they  proved  it  by  withering  a  German  counter- 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX      261 

attack  with  their  rifle  and  machine-gun  fire.  The 
Germans  covered  the  roads  to  the  rear  with  their 
artillery  in  revenge.  A  lone  man  could  not  approach 
the  town  without  being  sniped  at  and  shelled  for 
weeks  to  come. 

The  regulars,  too,  were  not  altogether  out  of 
the  action.  A  portion  of  the  23rd  Infantry  was 
due  to  advance  in  liaison  with  the  Marines,  in 
order  to  establish  a  satisfactory  tactical  line,  or, 
roughly,  to  prevent  a  salient.  This  frontal  warfare 
is  always  a  game  of  contriving  salients  for  the  enemy 
and  avoiding  them  for  yourselves.  There  seems  to 
have  been  a  little  misunderstanding  about  the  char- 
acter of  the  cooperation  and  the  time  of  movement. 
It  was  enough  for  the  regulars  that  they  as  well  as 
the  Marines  had  a  chance  to  attack  and  they  made 
the  most  of  it,  lest  they  should  not  get  another. 

They  had  an  objective  so  limited  that  their  en- 
thusiasm carried  them  over  it  at  a  time  when  short- 
age of  ammunition  did  not  allow  of  artillery  support. 
There  were  Germans  ahead  and  they  were  going  to 
reach  the  Germans.  The  Germans  proposed  to  hold 
them  off.  A  close  and  ugly  duel  ensued,  waged 
around  German  machine-gun  nests,  with  the  result 
that  groups  of  Americans  each  sought  a  new  ob- 
jective on  its  own  account.  The  regulars  were  wag- 
ing a  battle  of  their  own  and  winning  a  victory  of 
their  own  which  was  outside  of  staff  plans. 

These  warriors  were  a  little  cross  when  they  were 
brought  back  in  the  night  to  dig  in  along  the  line  of 
their  original  objective;  but,  as  they  said,  they  had 
"  mixed  it  up  "  with  the  Germans,  anyway,  and  their 
opinion  still  held  that  an  American — they  would  even 


262  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

include  an  American  Marine — could  lick  a  German. 
Their  regimental  commander,  in  turn,  ought  to  have 
been  wroth  with  them,  as  this  kind  of  a  runaway, 
free-for-all  fight  beyond  an  objective  Is  strictly  against 
the  rules;  but  he  concluded  that  It  was  better  to  have 
such  a  spirit  in  soldiers  than  too  much  caution. 

I  fear  that  caution  was  not  our  strong  point.  As 
novices,  we  wanted  all  the  emotions.  Our  imagina- 
tions expanded  with  the  very  thought  of  being  In  the 
Marne  battle.  Some  men  probably  had  the  Inner 
prompting  that  It  was  In  keeping  with  ethics  to  ex- 
pose themselves  lest  they  should  be  accused  of 
timidity,  but  rarely  was  this  the  reason.  Instances  of 
recklessness  were  due  to  the  sheer  intoxication  of 
the  moment  and  to  overwhelming  curiosity,  and  par- 
ticularly to  the  desire  to  come  to  close  quarters  with 
the  enemy.  Visiting  officers  from  G.  H.  Q.  and  other 
headquarters,  who  came  to  acquire  Information  for 
application  In  the  training  of  other  divisions,  must 
go  up  under  shell  fire  and  Into  the  front  line  If  they 
were  allowed,  or  else  they  would  not  be  fully  in- 
structed. 

The  young  officer  who,  I  am  Informed,  drove  a 
motor  into  Bouresches  the  day  It  was  taken,  being 
shelled  all  the  way  In  and  all  the  way  back,  had  a 
glorious  time  and  was  congratulating  himself  on  his 
experience  until  he  was  inducted  Into  the  professional 
truth  that  he  was  several  kinds  of  a  fool  who  had 
been  exposing  others  who  might  be  useful  members 
of  the  army.  A  commander  of  a  battalion,  when 
his  men  were  waiting  for  the  moment  of  attack,  saw 
a  man  in  uniform  standing  up  in  the  line  some  dis- 
tance away.     There  was  a  burst  of  very  strong 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX      263 

language  emphasized  by  a  blankety-blank  from  the 
commander  on  the  subject  of  lying  down  and  not 
drawing  fire.  The  man  looked  around  blandly  and 
was  recognized  as  a  chaplain. 

"  Well,  well,"  he  said  chidingly,  "  you  are  very 
vehement,  but  I  suppose  that  it  takes  all  kinds  of 
men  to  make  a  world." 

Then  something  cracked  close  to  the  chaplain's 
ear  which  made  him  drop  lower  than  his  knees, 
whether  in  prayer  or  not  witness  sayeth  not. 

The  motor-dispatch  rider  carrying  messages  to  our 
machine  gunners  in  the  Chateau-Thierry  suburb  had 
to  pass  over  a  long  and  sinister  stretch  of  exposed 
road  which  was  frequently  shelled.  His  cycle  was 
damaged,  he  had  been  wounded  and  had  been 
knocked  down  by  a  piece  of  shell  that  penetrated  his 
helmet  to  the  scalp  and  would  have  given  the  ordi- 
nary mortal  concussion  of  the  brain;  but  his  only 
source  of  distress  was  that  they  would  not  allow 
him  to  go  out  and  snipe  at  Germans  on  the  Marne 
in  intervals  when  he  was  waiting  for  messages. 

Meanwhile,  the  Marines  were  there  in  Belleau 
Wood  cheek  by  jowl  with  the  Germans,  who  were 
doubtless  slipping  more  machine  guns  into  their  por- 
tion of  the  wood.  The  Germans  must  be  made  to 
understand  that  this  wood  belonged  to  the  Marines; 
while  the  Germans  to  discourage  further  attacks  on 
our  part  began  gassing  the  approaches  both  to 
Bouresches  and  Belleau.  In  that  era  a  real  "  hate  " 
was  on.  We  had  grim  work  in  removing  our 
wounded  and  burying  our  dead,  and  dangerous  work 
in  bringing  up  wagons  over  shelled  roads  and  for- 
warding rations  to  the  men  in  the  front  line,  with  the 


264  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

3rd  as  well  as  the  4th  Brigade.  But  Bouresches 
sent  back  assuring  news  from  its  isolation.  The 
water  supply  was  good.  The  men  had  hot  coffee 
and  they  caught  chickens  and  killed  a  hog  and  a  cow. 
Their  messages  were  so  very  cheerful  out  In  that  vil- 
lage crumbling  under  shell  fire  that  you  might  have 
thought  they  were  having  a  holiday  in  a  summer 
resort.  Wasn't  it  their  village,  and  the  first  that  the 
Marines  had  taken? 

Before  our  next  attack  on  Belleau  we  gave  it  a 
more  powerful  artillery  preparation,  and  we  learned 
afresh  the  lesson  that  guns  will  not  reach  machine- 
gun  nests  in  the  midst  of  congeries  of  boulders.  A 
machine  gun  is  a  small  target  when  well  placed  and 
a  direct  hit,  or  a  very  close  hit,  of  a  high  explosive 
is  required  to  put  it  out  of  action.  Shells  burst  pre- 
maturely upon  striking  tree  trunks  and  before  reach- 
ing the  earth. 

When  our  men  advanced  at  five  o'clock  on  the 
morning  of  June  nth  they  found  resistance  at  least 
softened.  Some  machine  gunners  who  had  not  lost 
their  nerve  after  the  hoi  r's  artillery  pounding  stuck 
to  their  posts;  others  at  the  sight  of  our  men  break- 
ing through  the  thickets  threw  up  their  hands;  others 
went  in  hiding  among  the  boulders,  no  longer  sol- 
diers, but  children  frightened  by  the  lightnings.  The 
nests  that  held  us  back  formed  islands  in  our  progress 
which  had  to  be  cleaned  up  by  special  details. 

Let  it  be  repeated  that  the  very  irregular  bow 
shape  of  Belleau  Wood,  no  less  than  the  character 
of  the  ground,  favored  the  defenders  in  forming 
cross  zones  of  fire.  It  was  a  strange  and  fierce  busi- 
ness there  in  the  dense  brush,  where  men  of  the 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX      265 

same  squad  could  not  keep  touch  with  one  another 
at  times.  Happily,  we  had  located  some  of  the  nests 
before  we  attacked,  but  those  farther  ahead  we  could 
locate  only  when  they  began  firing  or  when  we  stum- 
bled upon  gunners  who  were  still  hugging  cover  after 
the  bombardment,  or  simply  had  concluded  that  it 
was  better  to  be  a  live  prisoner  than  to  die  for  the 
Kaiser.  They  were  taken  in  groups  and  singly,  taken 
standing  behind  trees  and  hugging  the  holes  they  had 
dug  in  the  earth.  Some  were  trying  to  retreat  with 
their  guns;  others  fled  precipitately,  and  many  kept 
serving  their  guns.  It  was  a  hunt  of  man-hornet 
nests,  with  khaki  the  hunter  and  the  German  gray 
the  hunted.  Our  men  fought  even  more  fiercely  than 
in  their  first  attack.  They  wanted  to  finish  the  Bel- 
leau  Wood  job  this  time;  but  this  was  not  to  be, 
though  we  had  taken  thirty  machine  guns,  two  minen- 
werfers  and  three  hundred  prisoners. 

After  advancing  to  a  certain  point  we  again  met 
the  machine-gun  nest  system  working  too  thoroughly 
to  permit  of  further  effort,  except  at  unnecessary 
sacrifice.  The  colonel  who  had  made  the  attack 
said  that  with  further  artillery  preparation  he  be- 
lieved that  he  could  master  the  rest  of  the  wood. 
When  the  guns  had  again  done  their  duty  his  men, 
whose  eyes  glittered  now  at  the  very  mention  of  Bel- 
leau  Wood,  made  another  attack  with  the  ardor  of 
men  who  have  faith  that  one  more  fierce  effort  would 
do  the  trick.  They  took  more  prisoners  and  more 
machine  guns.  For  a  time,  the  news  that  the  run- 
ners brought  back  indicated  that  success  was  com- 
plete. 

Now,  the  enemy,  smarting  under  our  success,  be- 


266  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

gan  bringing  up  reserves  and  concentrated  a  terrific 
artillery  fire  on  Bouresches,  the  wood  and  all  the 
neighborhood.  The  wood  had  become  a  point  of 
honor  with  the  Germans  no  less  than  with  the  Amer- 
icans. They  saturated  it  with  a  bombardment  of 
yperite  gas  which  clings  to  the  earth  and  the  trees 
and  burns  flesh  that  comes  in  contact  with  it.  As  the 
Germans  could  hardly  send  their  own  men  into  this 
area  for  two  or  three  days  to  suffer  the  effects  in- 
tended for  us,  we  withdrew  all  except  a  small  main- 
taining force  from  Belleau.  Meanwhile,  the  Ger- 
mans with  their  reserves  made  an  attack  in  force  on 
Bouresches.  By  all  criterions  this  attack  ought  to 
have  succeeded.  Some  Germans  penetrated  the  edge 
of  the  village  and  a  good  many  of  them  remained 
there — dead.  Our  machine-gun  fire  and  rifle  fire 
drove  all  others  who  escaped  back  to  their  lines.  At 
the  same  time,  under  cover  of  their  artillery,  the 
Germans  had  reenforced  their  machine-gun  units 
which  remained  in  the  edge  of  the  wood,  probably 
thinking  that  as  soon  as  the  effects  of  the  yperite 
were  over  the  recovery  of  the  wood  would  not  be 
difficult. 

For  twelve  days,  now,  the  Second  Division  had 
been  in  the  line  and  the  Marines  had  put  all  their 
physical  and  nerve  vitality  into  the  effort  against  Bel- 
leau. They  had  gone  into  the  fight  in  the  fettle  of 
race  horses.  Glimpses  of  the  approaches  to  the 
wood  during  an  attack,  when  retaliatory  shell  fire 
descended  on  wounded  and  German  prisoners  alike, 
formed  the  most  vivid  picture  of  war  that  I  had  yet 
seen  behind  the  American  lines.  The  prisoners  re- 
garded their  captors  in  a  kind  of  wondering  and 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX       267 

tragic  stupor.  Their  staff  had  told  them  that  the 
Americans  were  untrained,  a  mob,  negligible.  Yet 
these  Americans  had  charged  straight  at  the  machine 
guns;  they  had  crept  around  the  machine  guns  and 
then  leapt  out  of  the  thickets  with  furious  abrupt- 
ness. They  were  untamed,  wild,  refusing  to  con- 
sider the  rules  laid  down  by  the  German  Staff  for 
their  conduct.  Captured  German  intelligence  re- 
ports, contradicting  German  propaganda,  spoke  of 
them  as  only  needing  a  little  more  training  to  be 
first-class  shock  troops  according  to  the  German  con- 
ception— which  was  a  real  German  compliment. 

The  battalion  which  had  made  the  two  attacks  that 
all  but  finished  the  task,  suffering  from  machine-gun 
fire,  mortar  fire,  shell  fire  and  gas,  had  reached  the 
stage  of  exhaustion  when  nature  overwhelms  will; 
when,  although  a  man  says,  "  I'm  all  right — as  good 
as  ever !  "  his  eyelids  droop  as  the  sentence  is  fin- 
ished and  the  next  moment  he  falls  dead  asleep. 
This  battalion  must  have  rest;  and  the  remainder  of 
the  brigade,  with  all  its  spirit  and  energy  responding 
to  the  driver's  hand,  must  also  have  some  relief  from 
the  strain. 

A  regiment  from  the  Third  Division  was  now  in- 
troduced into  the  brigade  for  six  days  and  sent  into 
Belleau,  a  regiment  that  had  not  had  long  training 
and  was  unfamiliar  with  the  ground  and  with  such 
merciless  fighting  in  such  surroundings;  and  the 
tired,  tried  4th  Brigade  of  the  Second,  which  had 
had  no  rest,  took  over  the  task  in  Bouresches,  where, 
under  the  persistent  shelling,  the  lookouts  kept  their 
**  death  watch  "  while  all  the  other  men  were  under 
cover.    If  the  death  watch  were  killed,  another  man 


268  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

took  his  place  in  keeping  a  lookout  for  any  move- 
ment of  the  enemy  which  would  require  that  every 
member  of  the  garrison  go  to  the  position  assigned  to 
him  for  resisting  an  attack  as  soon  as  the  enemy 
barrage  had  lifted. 

The  Germans  had  been  strengthening  their  re- 
maining strongholds  in  the  wood,  and  particularly 
one  stronghold  among  a  congerie  of  boulders  in  very 
dense  thicket  with  every  avenue  of  approach  covered 
by  its  fire.  Units  of  the  Third  Division  were  to  try 
on  June  2ist  and  22nd  to  force  their  reduction,  but 
fortune  was  not  with  the  attempts.  Some  of  the  Ger- 
man machine  gunners,  it  was  reported,  had  put  on 
American  uniforms,  which  enabled  them  for  a  time 
to  deceive  our  own  men  as  to  the  progress  of  our 
attacking  parties,  with  resultant  ambushes. 

The  Marines  were  put  back  in  Belleau,  relieving 
the  regiment  of  the  Third.  The  Germans  still  had 
access  to  go  and  come  freely  to  their  strongholds  in 
the  north  end  of  the  wood.  It  was  an  old  trick  with 
the  Germans,  this  holding  the  edge  and  approaches  of 
a  wood  with  the  main  body  of  the  wood  protecting 
them  from  shell  fire.  On  numerous  occasions  it 
had  been  successful.  General  Harbord  was  deter- 
mined that  it  should  not  be  successful  on  this  occa- 
sion. The  Marines  made  another  effort  with  very 
small  forces  which  failed;  but  in  this  effort  they 
gained  the  knowledge  for  the  final  one  that  succeeded 
when  all  their  preparations  were  correct  in  every 
detail. 

As  one  of  the  reports  that  came  back  said,  "  Our 
men  went  through  them  like  a  bunch  of  wildcats!  " 
There  could  be  no  better  description  of  what  hap- 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX      269 

pened.  That  last  rush,  after  artillery  preparation, 
had  a  cat-like  ferocity  which  put  all  thickets  and  all 
machine-gun  nests  behind  it,  and  looked  out  into  the 
open  beyond  the  object  of  three  weeks  of  straining 
muscle,  sleepless  vigil  and  desperate  courage.  Once 
we  were  among  them,  the  Germans  who  remained 
alive  bent  to  the  storm.  The  two  hundred  prisoners 
taken  in  that  little  area  was  a  further  proof  of  the 
importance  attached  to  the  wood.  The  German  dead 
who  were  buried  there,  after  they  had  fought  with 
a  fiendish  resolution  that  trained  German  soldiers 
should  not  yield  to  untrained  Americans,  were  still 
further  proof. 

Our  attacks  on  Belleau  Wood  had  been  justified 
by  the  result.  In  all  we  had  taken  seven  hundred  Ger- 
mans alive  out  of  the  woods,  and  severe  as  our  casu- 
alties had  been,  the  prisoners  exceeded  the  number  of 
our  dead  without  counting  the  numerous  German 
dead,  which,  in  the  cold  accounting  of  war,  was  an 
unusual  accomplishment.  We  had  also  proved  our 
mastery  over  the  enemy.  We  had  set  out  to  take 
a  position  and  we  had  taken  it,  which  was  of  infinite 
value  to  the  morale  of  a  young  army  and  of  corre- 
sponding influence  in  weakening  that  of  an  enemy 
when  he  faced  our  troops.  Forever,  the  Marines 
will  consider  the  Belleau  Wood  as  theirs,  and  in 
recognition  of  their  title  the  French  changed  the 
name  to  that  of  Marine  Brigade  Wood. 

Another  phase  of  the  A.  E.  F.  development  had 
passed.  The  skillful  First  had  taken  a  village  in  an 
established  sector.  Now  the  Second  Division  had 
taken  a  wood;  and  villages  and  woods,  particularly 
woods,  are  the  points  of  resistance  in  France,  the 


270  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

symbols  of  success  and  failure.  There  remained  only 
one  further  experience  to  complete  our  curriculum: 
participation  in  a  great  offensive  drive,  which  was  to 
come. 

Continuing  with  the  history  of  the  Second  in  the 
month  of  June  and  thus  anticipating  chronology,  we 
come  to  the  capture  of  Vaux  and  positions  along  the 
line  to  Hill  204  on  July  ist  by  the  3rd  Brigade, 
which  had  been  repulsing  minor  attacks  and  making 
some  minor  attacks  often  under  shell  fire,  while  the 
4th  Brigade  had  been  holding  the  stage.  Vaux 
was  a  slightly  larger  village  than  Bouresches,  situ- 
ated in  a  valley  before  the  road  rises  to  pass  over 
the  crest  to  Chateau-Thierry.  Our  intelligence  serv- 
ice had  located  every  house  with  a  large  cellar  in  the 
place  and  the  Germans  must  be  in  the  cellars.  Act- 
ing upon  this  information,  the  work  of  the  artillery 
was  easily  plotted.  The  accuracy  of  its  fire,  as  the 
ruins  revealed  afterward,  was  more  in  keeping  with 
sharp-shooting  than  shooting  with  guns.  Plump — 
plump!  we  put  the  heavy  shells  into  Vaux  with  a 
merciless  regularity  as  a  nerve-wrecking  introduction 
to  the  final  storm  which  we  visited  upon  it  before 
the  infantry  attack. 

Through  the  four  weeks  in  our  active  line  the 
men  of  the  3rd  Brigade  had  been  hardened  and  dis- 
ciplined, learning  self-reliance  and  team  play.  Held 
to  one  line,  while  the  4th  Brigade  had  had  con- 
tinual offensive  action,  their  ardor,  now  that  their 
turn  for  attack  came,  was  schooled  with  very  exact  in- 
structions as  to  the  details  of  the  operation.  Emer- 
gencies had  been  foreseen.  Each  officer  knew  his 
part.    There  could.be  no  faltering  in  the  face  of  fire 


BELLEAU  WOOD  AND  VAUX      271 

considering  the  spirit  of  the  men,  which  was  fur- 
ther aroused  by  fifteen  hours'  intense  shelling  which 
they  endured  from  the  Germans  before  they  went 
over  the  top. 

On  our  right  we  were  to  advance  in  liaison  with 
the  French  who  were  to  attack  Hill  204,  which  I 
have  already  described  as  commanding  Chateau- 
Thierry.  Thus,  the  movement  was  broader  than  a 
front  necessary  for  attacking  the  village.  We  made 
it  with  a  clockwork  precision  behind  our  barrage. 
When  machine-gun  fire  developed  that  was  one  of  the 
emergencies.  We  took  care  of  the  machine  guns  with 
rifle  fire  and  automatics  and  encircling  tactics. 

Five  minutes  after  our  men  had  gone  over  the 
top  they  were  in  the  outskirts  of  Vaux.  Having 
maps  of  the  location  of  cellars,  the  details  assigned 
for  the  purpose  knew  exactly  where  to  go  in  order 
to  gather  in  the  garrison  as  prisoners.  There  were 
sharp  encounters,  but  they  did  not  last  long.  Our 
advance  had  been  too  rapid,  our  artillery  fire,  thanks 
to  the  excellent  observation  we  had  of  the  town  in 
the  valley,  too  effective  to  allow  of  much  resistance. 
*'  There's  nothing  to  it;  it's  a  cinch  1  "  the  captors  of 
Vaux  said.  Vaux  was  a  perfect  success,  so  smoothly 
conducted  that  it  was  void  of  sensational  incidents. 
The  4th  Brigade  had  taken  five  hundred  prisoners 
as  further  evidence  that  it  was  doing  its  part  in  keep- 
ing up  the  record  of  the  Second  Division. 


XXI 

WOUNDED  AND  PRISONERS 

Flattering  rumors  of  our  fighting  powers — The  ethics  of  close- 
quarter  fighting — Our  men  fought  cleanly  and  honorably — 
With  the  arrival  of  our  wounded  the  Red  Cross  was  found 
ready  for  every  emergency — Our  wounded  take  hardships  as 
a  matter  of  course — Compensations  for  being  wounded — Do 
wounded  men  "  want "  to  go  back  to  battle  ? 

For  the  Allies  the  action  of  the  Second  and  Third 
Divisions  was  a  blood-test  of  our  purpose  in  the  war. 
It  silenced  the  last  of  the  insidious  whispers  back 
of  the  lines  which  said  that  we  might  be  relied  upon 
only  to  build  warehouses  and  do  Red  Cross  and 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  work  and  hold  quiet  trench  sectors,  and 
it  also  silenced  those  comrades-in-arms  of  the  whis- 
perers, the  German  propagandists,  who  said  that  as 
we  would  not  even  go  to  war  against  Mexico  in  our 
material  interest,  we  would  never  fight  very  hard  in 
Europe,  where  we  had  no  material  interest.  We 
were  fighting  in  Europe,  of  course,  in  order  that 
gentry  who  reasoned  in  this  fashion  might  be  enlight- 
ened about  the  cause  of  the  war. 

The  French  made  us  veritable  prodigies  of  valor; 
and  at  home  our  people  were  as  enthusiastic  as  every 
people  are  when  in  any  war  its  sons,  by  their  gal- 
lantry, renew  the  faith  which  every  country  has  in 
its  manhood.     Reports,  based  upon  the  pantherish 

272 


WOUNDED  AND  PRISONERS       273 

quality  of  our  soldiers,  sent  us  into  action  in  Moham- 
medan fury  stripped  to  the  waist.  The  accuracy  of 
our  shooting  surpassed  any  target  range  records. 
Eife  was  nothing  to  us.  We  were  rash  beyond  all 
reason.  We  saw  red  when  we  charged  and  kept  on 
going  until  we  killed  the  foe  or  were  killed.  Con- 
sidering the  immense  army  which  we  were  as- 
sembling, it  was  most  reassuring  to  France  to  think 
in  this  fashion. 

Gossip  said  openly  and  public  reports  hinted  that 
we  did  not  bother  to  take  prisoners.  The  reported 
remark  of  the  Australians  that  we  were  good  soldiers 
but  a  "  bit  rough  "  was  a  conversational  tidbit  in 
London  and  Paris  in  keeping  with  the  idea,  held  in 
some  quarters,  that  men  who  came  from  overseas 
must  have  the  streak  of  savagery  which  is  associated 
with  lands  where  civilized  races  have  supplanted 
savages. 

We  might  as  well  consider  this  subject  now  by  say- 
ing, to  begin  with,  that  any  commanding  officer  who 
incites  his  men  not  to  take  prisoners  is  a  fool.  If 
there  is  anything  that  makes  an  enemy  fight  with  the 
'desperation  of  a  rat  in  a  hole,  it  is  the  conviction 
that  his  life  Is  forfeit  In  any  event.  We  should  wel- 
come taking  the  whole  German  army  prisoners. 

There  are  occasions  when  no  quarter  can  be  given. 
When  you  are  fighting  In  the  darkness  you  must  kill 
any  enemy  who  shows  sign  of  action.  When  he  is 
in  a  reckless  mood,  you  cannot  leave  him  loose  at 
your  back  in  a  trench  while  there  are  plenty  of  hand 
grenades  and  rifles  within  his  reach.  From  the  mo- 
ment that  he  holds  up  his  hands  it  must  be  assured 
that  he  Is  a  non-combatant  for  the  duration  of  the 


274  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

war.  Ff  an  enemy  has  developed  the  habit  of  sur- 
rendering and  then  re-entering  the  fight  when  an 
opportunity  offers,  he  must  realize  that  he  will  not 
have  the  advantage  of  a  doubt  in  a  crisis.  As  be- 
tween taking  an  enemy's  life  and  having  your  life 
or  the  life  of  a  comrade  risked,  you  take  the  enemy's 
life.  This  is  efficient  war-making;  and  the  process 
works  out  without  deliberation,  when  blood  is 
hot. 

A  machine  gunner  who  sticks  to  his  gun  while  he 
looks  out  from  his  nest  at  the  bodies  of  men  fallen 
from  his  fire  a  few  yards  away,  and  who  throws  up 
his  hands  and  cries  "  Kamerad !  "  as  the  survivors  of 
the  charge  press  upon  him,  cannot  expect  to  stay  a 
bayonet  thrust  from  one  of  the  comrades  of  the 
fallen,  where  mercy  would  only  encourage  other 
gunners  in  other  nests  to  continue  killing  to  the 
last  second  in  the  confidence  that  "  Kamerad!  "  will 
save  their  lives. 

Yet  our  men  have  given  quarter  on  such  occasions, 
out  of  the  instinct  which  arrests  a  blow  at  the  sight 
of  a  man  who  places  his  fate  in  your  hands.  I  have 
heard  no  verified  accounts  of  killing  in  cold  blood. 
It  is  against  our  nature.  Of  course,  some  soldiers 
will  talk  "  big,'^'  particularly  if  they  think  that  the 
listener  wants  to  hear  something  grisly  and  bloody; 
but  they  do  not  act  up  to  their  talk. 

"Your  Kaiser's  got  you  in  wrong!  We're  going 
to  keep  pounding  you  till  you  find  it  out,  you  poor 
boobs !  "  as  I  heard  one  American  soldier  say  to 
some  prisoners.  This  seems  to  me  a  fairly  illumi- 
nating expression  of  our  attitude  and  our  cause.  We 
have  fought  cleanly  and  honorably,  and  those  who 


WOUNDED  AND  PRISONERS       275 

bear  the  burden  of  death  and  hardship  require  no 
incentive  from  rumor-mongers  in  order  to  continue 
to  do  their  duty  in  the  light  of  their  principles  and 
of  sound  military  training. 

Our  surgeons  had  now  to  meet  red  emergency  in 
the  field  and  in  the  hospital  at  Meaux.  The  Red 
Cross,  which  in  the  early  period  of  the  expedition 
had  had  to  find  other  fields  of  service  than  that  of 
caring  for  wounded,  might  come  to  the  assistance  of 
the  Army  Medical  Corps.  Major  Perkins  had  fore- 
seen such  an  emergency  and  his  organization  had 
accumulated  immense  quantities  of  supplies  of  all 
kinds.  It  was  ready  in  a  kind  of  work  in  which 
readiness  is  everything.  It  has  the  advantage  over 
that  great  official  machine,  the  army,  in  being  able 
to  pay  cash  and  in  summoning  civil  assistance  for 
short  periods  to  meet  sudden  requirements. 

Indeed,  for  all  the  auxiliaries  the  June  fighting  and 
the  much  heavier  July  fighting  that  was  to  follow 
meant  an  introduction  into  a  new  and  active  phase. 
The  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  the  K.  of  C.  men  were  rushing 
about  in  their  little  trucks  to  supply  hot  coffee,  lemon- 
ade, chocolate — anything  they  could  find  in  Paris  for 
the  tired  and  hungry  fighters  when  they  returned 
from  the  front  with  prodigious  appetites.  It  was 
an  occasion,  also,  when  the  sheep  might  be  sepa- 
rated Trom  goats  among  the  workers;  the  line  drawn 
between  the  man  and  the  woman  joy-riding  to  Europe 
for  a  six-months'  tour  with  a  fondness  for  a  station 
in  ParFs,  and  the  man  and  the  woman  who  had  the 
real  spirit  of  service. 

The  Red  Cross  tented  hospital  on  the  race  track 
at  Auteuil,  on  the  outskirts  of  Paris,  sprang  up  as 


276  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

by  magic  because  all  the  material  for  it  had  been  in 
storage.  It  was  most  reassuring  to  the  visitor  in  its 
up-to-date  appointments  and  organization,  as  it  re- 
ceived the  wounded  who  had  been  evacuated  from 
the  hospitals  at  the  front.  To  the  wounded  in  the 
airy  marquees  in  soft  June  weather,  the  wonderful 
thing  was  that  they  were  to  see  Paris.  They  could 
consider  that  prospect  as  they  lay  on  their  cots, 
unless  pain  numbed  their  thoughts.  The  severe 
cases  which  hung  on  the  edge  of  the  other  world 
breathing  with  an  effort,  or  faintly;  the  acute  cases, 
with  eyes  dazed;  the  cases  of  a  little  gas  burn,  or 
a  light  shell  wound,  or  a  bullet  wound — superficially 
one  hospital  is  much  like  another.  All  who  were 
getting  better  were  happy  in  the  way  that  only  men 
who  have  been  wounded  understand.  Hospitaliza- 
tion had  not  been  quite  all  that  it  should  be  at  the 
outset  of  our  fighting  on  the  Marne,  owing  to  an 
American  division  having  been  introduced  into  the 
French  army  at  a  time  of  stress  and  some  confusion; 
but  there  was  no  complaint  from  officers  or  soldiers. 
As  we  were  a  people  used  to  home  comforts,  it  might 
be  wondered  how  we  should  bear  hardships;  but  we 
took  them  as  a  matter  of  course. 

Wasn't  it  war  ?  And  the  most  terrible  of  all  wars  ? 
For  three  years  we  had  been  reading  of  its  horrors, 
of  the  misery  of  the  trenches,  of  the  use  of  gas  and 
Bame  throwers,  of  the  hideous  wounds  from  shell  fire 
and  of  battalions  which  had  been  shattered  and  re- 
newed again  and  again.  We  had  seen  pictures  of 
ruined  villages  and  trench  lines  smashed  by  prelim- 
inary bombardments.  We  had  had  three  years  of 
instructional  preparation  for  what  we  should  have 


WOUNDED  AND  PRISONERS       277 

to  en3ure  if  we  gave  up  our  security  and  took  part 
in  the  inferno. 

A  generation  unfamiliar  with  war  had  the  ad- 
vantage of  an  example  in  its  own  time  to  restrain 
the  enthusiasm  which  goes  forth  at  the  march  to 
the  strains  of  martial  music  to  an  adventure  whose 
character  only  a  previous  generation  which  had 
fought  could  understand.  A  reasoning  and  keenly 
perceptive  democracy,  we  went  into  the  war  with  our 
eyes  open.  A  nervous  people,  we  bore  our  pain 
better  than  the  Germans  who  boasted  that  they  had 
no  nerves.  I  had  an  idea  that  the  young  German 
recruits  had  been  kept  from  thinking  of  the  conse- 
quences of  battle  and  that  pain  came  to  them  as  a 
surprise.  The  Kaiser  had  not  mentioned  this  inci- 
dent in  world  conquest  for  glorifying  the  Hohen- 
zollerns. 

Convalescent,  bathed  and  shaved,  our  Americans 
in  the  marquees  at  Auteuil  or  at  the  base  hospitals 
might  enjoy  the  thought  that  now  they  were  entitled 
to  a  wound  chevron.  They  might  sleep  as  much  as 
they  pleased  after  days  without  sleep.  Only  those 
who  had  carried  a  pack  and  marched  In  the  thick  dust 
and  lain  under  shell  fire  and  bombing  from  the  air 
as  they  hugged  rifle  pits  and  charged  machine-gun 
nests  and  spent  the  night  In  digging  and  putting  out 
barbed  wire,  can  realize  the  fullness  and  the  sweet- 
ness of  being  free-limbed  In  hospital  pyjamas,  with 
nothing  to  do  except  to  play  a  game  of  cards,  or 
read  the  papers,  or  write  to  a  girl  they  know  at 
home;  or  realize  the  pride,  the  clear,  patriotic  con- 
science, of  the  wounded  man  who  has  fought  bravely. 

Of  course  it  was  written  that  the  one  thing  that 


278  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  wounded  wanted  to  do  was  to  return  to  the 
front.  They  were  pictured  as  being  restrained  from 
jumping  up  from  their  cots  and  rushing  out  to  meet 
a  barrage.  The  wounded  are  so  pictured  in  all  hos- 
pital accounts.  It  is  the  thing  to  write  and  for  the 
wounded  to  say;  and  wounded  men  have  a  way  of 
saying  what  they  think  you  desire  them  to  say — 
especially  to  kind  nurses. 

Much  depends  in  this  respect  upon  what  is  meant 
by  the  word  "  want."  In  my  interpretation  of  it, 
very  few  soldiers  zuant  to  go  back  into  battle,  not 
even  in  an  army  as  young  to  war  as  ours  was.  They 
want  to  go  home  to  the  life  of  their  family  and 
friends.  They  would  not  be  human  if  they  took  any 
other  view.  Yet,  offer  them  the  alternative  of  going 
home  or  of  remaining  until  they  have  won  the  war, 
and  that  is  putting  the  matter  in  another  light.  They 
had  come  to  France  to  do  a  certain  piece  of  work. 
It  was  a  bloody,  dusty,  sweaty,  unclean,  disagreeable 
one  and  they  proposed  to  finish  it,  which  is  really 
more  credit  to  their  intelligence  and  character  and  a 
surer  guarantee  of  victory  than  to  have  them  longing 
to  charge  machine  guns  as  if  it  were  a  sport.  Their 
knowledge  of  the  nature  of  the  war  partly  accounted 
for  the  fact  that  later  when  fresh  troops  were  sud- 
denly thrown  into  murderous  fire,  they  were  not 
demoralized  by  it  as  new  troops  are  supposed  to  be. 
They  knew  what  was  coming.  I  speak  both  of 
officers  and  of  men,  who  are  of  the  same  intrinsic 
nature. 

We  are  a  people  given  to  discounting  futures ;  and 
the  average  American  soldier,  to  put  it  bluntly,  dis- 
counted being  killed  in  action.    If  our  allies,  whose 


WOUNDED  AND  PRISONERS      279 

fortitude  was  sustained  in  a  dark  hour  by  the  way 
that  our  men  fought,  could  have  probed  what  was 
in  the  mind  of  these  Americans,  they  would  have 
found  still  further  reason  for  faith  in  our  military 
strength. 


XXII 

DIVISIONS  WITH  THE  ENGLISH 

The  great  June  disembarkation  of  our  troops — The  first  of  the 
National  Army  divisions — ^Truly  a  "  melting-pot "  division — 
Everyone  had  a  warm  place  in  his  heart  for  the  Seventy- 
seventh — ^The  National  Guard  divisions  of  New  York  and 
Pennsylvania  arrive — Also  the  "  Wildcat  "  division — Regi- 
ments of  tall  men  who  could  shoot  and  fight — ^The  moun- 
taineers and  the  pill-box — The  Illinois  and  New  Jersey 
divisions  with  the  British — The  Second  Corps  of  two  hundred 
and  seventy  thousand  men  with  the  British — ^What  Britain 
stands  for — Relations  between  Briton  and  Yankee — And  be- 
tween the  Scotch,  Canadians,  Australians  and  the  Yankee 
— On  the  British  front. 

By  this  time  the  A.  E.  F.  was  not  only  feeling  the 
impulse  of  the  mighty  spirit  and  power  of  the  nation 
at  home  behind  us,  but  the  living  force  of  the  divi- 
sions from  the  training  camps  arriving  in  the  course 
of  the  great  June  troop  movement.  There  was  a 
new  light  in  the  eyes  of  every  American  in  France; 
that  of  the  confidence  of  rapidly  increasing  numbers. 
The  pins  which  showed  the  location  of  each  unit 
were  pricking  new  holes  in  the  map  at  G.  H.  Q. 
every  day.  Memory  no  longer  kept  track  of  the 
identity  of  the  divisions  which  were  already  in 
France  or  on  the  sea. 

A  division  was  just  another  division  except,  if 
we  retrogress  a  little  to  the  period  when  the  plans  of 
the  Abbeville  agreement  were  first  coming  into 
fruition,  that  we  all  had  a  thrill  with  the  news  that 

280 


DIVISIONS  WITH  THE  ENGLISH    281 

a  National  Army  division,  the  Seventy-seventh 
'(305th-3o8th  regiments)  from  New  York  City,  was 
in  France.  Everyone  wanted  a  glimpse  of  the  Sev- 
enty-seventh, not  only  because  it  was  National  Army 
but  because  it  was  truly  a  "  melting-pot "  division. 
Our  British  cousins  could  hardly  recognize  in  its 
ranks  the  consanguinity  expected  in  a  division  from  a 
country  speaking  the  same  language,  and  they  were 
to  find  that  some  of  the  men  of  the  Seventy-seventh 
did  not  speak  English  except  in  a  broken  fashion. 
The  size  of  the  men,  too,  was  a  surprise,  considering 
that  they  came  from  overseas.  The  little  fellows 
from  the  tenements  of  the  East  Side  hardly  meas- 
ured up  to  the  physical  standards  set  by  the  native 
Austrahans  and  the  Canadians. 

There  was  no  division  which  included  a  greater 
variety  of  occupations — all  there  were  in  New  York 
City.  If  you  wanted  a  garment  worker,  a  printer,  a 
sign  painter,  a  gunsmith,  a  wheelwright,  a  metal 
worker,  a  plumber,  a  cobbler,  an  artist,  a  poet,  a  cook 
who  could  do  French  pastry  or  corned  beef  and  cab- 
bage, a  valet,  a  waiter  or  a  butler,  why,  you  had 
only  to  call  on  the  Seventy-seventh.  The  one  fea- 
ture in  which  it  was  weak  was  in  men  who  knew  how 
to  care  for  horses.  Subway  guards,  lace-makers, 
cigar-makers  and  store  clerks  did  not  take  to  animal 
transport  without  a  lot  of  training. 

Everybody  in  the  A.  E.  F.  had  an  affection  for  the 
Seventy-seventh  without  ever  having  seen  a  single 
man  of  the  division.  The  Seventy-seventh  expressed 
a  national  idea.  We  wanted  to  see  those  little 
fellows  from  the  tenements,  who  were  bunking  along 
with  the  sons  from  the  apartments  and  the  houses 


282  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

uptown,  make  a  fine  showing.  If  they  did,  it  would 
be  the  proof  of  the  national  idea  carried  into  prac- 
tice. With  all  their  training,  their  physique  was 
against  them  in  carrying  their  heavy  packs  and  dig- 
ging trenches  and  enduring  the  inconceivable  strain 
of  battle  action,  which  would  make  success  all  the 
more  to  their  credit.  At  least,  they  ought  not  to  be 
alarmed  by  shell  fire  after  having  survived  New 
York  traffic.  England,  too,  had  her  little  factory 
hands  and  cockneys,  who  were  the  product  of  their 
environment  no  less  than  the  men  of  the  Thirty-fifth 
(i37th-i40th  regiments),  former  National  Guard 
from  Kansas  and  Missouri,  under  command  of 
Major  General  William  M.  Wright,  who  were  of 
the  Canadian  and  Australian  standard  of  height  and 
chest  measure.  We  knew  what  to  expect  from  the 
Middle  West,  where  fresh  air  and  good  food  build 
up  physique  from  childhood.  These  men  had  the 
basic  strength  of  body,  the  pride  of  State  and  of 
self,  which  will  always  tell  on  the  battlefield.  You 
took  them  for  granted.  And  wasn't  Missouri  Gen- 
eral Pershing's  own  State? 

The  Twenty-seventh  (i05th-io8th  regiments) 
former  National  Guard  from  New  York  State, 
under  Major  General  John  J.  O'Ryan,  had  men 
from  my  own  county  and  town  where  I  lived  as  a 
boy.  How  were  they  doing?  Local  pride  was 
touched.  Who  has  not  some  battalion  in  the  army 
which  he  holds  in  the  affection  of  a  home  guard? 
The  men  from  the  hills  of  western  New  York,  par- 
ticularly in  the  neighborhood  of  the  watershed  of 
Chautauqua  which  sends  the  rains  in  one  direction  to 
the  Gulf  and  in  the  other  to  the  St.   Lawrence, 


DIVISIONS  WITH  THE  ENGLISH    283 

were  bound  to  fight  well.  I  had,  too,  an  in^^erest 
in  the  Twenty-eighth,  formerly  National  Guard  of 
Pennsylvania,  as  I  was  born  in  Pennsylvania  such 
a  long  time  ago  that  the  sons  of  some  of  the  boys 
of  my  time  were  soldiers  now.  The  Twenty-seventh 
and  Twenty-eighth  were  among  the  National  Guard 
divisions  which  had  taken  their  work  very  seriously 
before  the  war  and  which  had  been  supported  by 
their  States,  with  the  result  that  they  thought  that 
they  were  entitled  to  be  as  early  in  France  as  thf 
Twenty-sixth.  We  shall  hear  much  of  the  Twenty- 
eighth,  which  arrived  before  the  Twenty-seventh, 
when  we  come  to  the  fighting  in  the  Marne  salient. 
The  division  which  should  have  been  most  at  home 
racially  with  the  British  was  the  Thirtieth  (117th- 
i20th  regiments),  commanded  by  Major  General 
Edward  M.  Lewis,  which  came  from  the  mountains 
of  North  and  South  Carolina  and  Tennessee. 
Ninety-five  per  cent  of  the  men  were  pure  Anglo- 
Saxon.  No  division  is  so  truly  American,  if  gen- 
erations of  ancestry  on  our  soil  counts  for  being 
American.  There  was  no  difliculty  in  finding  men 
who  knew  horses  or  mules  or  corn-planting  in  their 
ranks;  but  if  you  sought  tailors,  electricians,  lace- 
makers,  butlers,  brass  workers  or  card-index  experts, 
you  had  come  to  the  wrong  market.  Tall  and  lean 
and  corn  fed — isn't  that  the  proper  phrase  to  use 
about  them?  When  the  King  of  England  came  to 
the  British  front'they  marshaled  a  company  of  the 
tallest  as  an  example  of  American  manhood,  with 
impressive  results.  Could  any  country  furnish  a 
greater  contrast  than  they  made  with  the  Seventy- 
seventh?      And  who  would  ever  have  thought  two 


284  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

years  previously  that  both  would  be  participating  in 
this  great  excursion  party  to  Europe  ? 

You  might  depend  upon  it  that  the  men  of  the 
Thirtieth  could  shoot,  for  hunting  game  had  not  died 
out  in  their  home  country.  In  their  day  some  of 
them  had  had  feuds ;  now,  they  had  a  common  feud 
against  the  Huns.  Silent  and  polite  men,  used  to 
solitudes,  thinking  definitely  and  simply  in  old-fash- 
ioned terms  of  life  and  death,  they  were  touched 
with  the  crusade  spirit  From  their  very  origin  more 
sentimentally  and  more  intensely  than  dwellers  in 
cities.  Their  interest  in  their  surroundings  centered 
in  the  crops  and  the  farming  in  the  flat  country  of 
the  Ypres  salient,  which  was  a  strange  place  for 
mountaineers  to  find  themselves.  They  belonged  in 
the  Vosges  for  atmosphere's  sake.  Some  of  their 
words  were  Shakespearean  and  classic  from  inheri- 
tance, just  as  many  words  which  the  French  Cana- 
dians use  belong  to  the  time  of  Moliere,  although  I 
am  not  sure  that  "  tote  "  is  in  this  category.  It 
sounded  particularly  applicable  to  carrying  a  pack. 

The  aeroplanes,  whose  hum  the  men  of  the  Thir- 
tieth heard  overhead  in  the  darkness,  they  named 
"  night  riders."  I  think  that  the  concluding  lines  of 
a  letter  which  one  mountaineer  wrote  home  deserve 
mention  as  a  gem  of  sententiousness :  "  I  must  close 
now,  mother.  I've  got  to  go  out  to  kill  a  Hun. 
With  love  to  father,  Joe."  It  was  the  concrete 
purpose  of  his  mission  and  of  all  our  soldiers'  mis- 
sions in  France,  and  he  did  not  favor  the  involutions 
of  the  literary  style  of  the  late  Henry  James  in  ap- 
proaching the  delicate  subject. 

The  mountaineers  had  a  natural  eye  for  ground. 


DIVISIONS  WITH  THE  ENGLISH    285 

and  as  they  were  used  to  being  at  large  on  the  land- 
scape, they  took  naturally  to  patrols.  The  incident 
of  the  pill-box,  as  it  was  told  to  me,  was  in  keeping 
with  their  character.  The  machine  gun  in  the  pill- 
box across  a  wheat  field  in  No  Man's  Land  was  very 
irritating  to  them  the  first  time  that  they  were  in  the 
trenches.  An  officer  crawled  out  in  the  wheat  field 
and  studied  the  habits  of  the  Germans  day  and  night, 
then  set  forth  with  ten  men  on  his  enterprise,  only 
to  decide  that  two  men  would  be  enough  and  to  send 
the  rest  back.  He  had  found  that  the  gunners  were 
off  guard  every  day  at  noon,  evidently  taking  their 
luncheon.  The  three  mountaineers  sprang  out  of 
the  wheat,  rushed  the  pill-box  at  noon  and  threw 
bombs  in  at  the  entrance  and  through  the  firing 
aperture  with  perfectly  satisfactory  results.  One 
never  returned,  but  thereafter  they  heard  nothing 
from  the  pill-box. 

In  all,  ten  divisions  were  to  be  trained  with  the 
British,  including  the  Fourth,  regular  (47th,  39th, 
58th  and  59th  regiments),  under  command  of  Major 
General  John  L.  Hines.  The  Thirty-third  (129th- 
132nd  regiments).  National  Guard,  from  Illinois 
under  command  of  Major  General  George  Bell,  Jr., 
had  a  battalion  in  the  front  line  when  the  British 
counter-attack  of  August  8th  began;  and  our  men 
went  ahead  with  their  comrades,  the  Australians, 
taking  machine-gun  nests  and  prisoners  and  demon- 
strating that  Illinois  did  not  require  months  of  trench 
warfare  in  order  to  develop  a  spirit  of  initiative 
when  Illinois  had  brought  initiative  with  them  from 
home.  I  saw  a  battalion  of  the  Seventy-eighth,  Na- 
tional Army   (309th-3i2th  regiments),  from  New 


286  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Jersey,  with  replacements  from  western  New  York 
and  Pennsylvania,  known  as  the  Lightning  Division, 
under  command  of  Major  General  James  H. 
McRae,  marching  up  to  the  trenches.  They  went 
singing  "Keep  down  your  head,  you  dirty  Hun," 
with  a  spirit  in  keeping  with  their  soldierly  appear- 
ance. Some  of  the  men  from  the  Jersey  water  front 
were  not  of  the  fashionable  height  of  the  Thirtieth, 
but  they  were  keeping  up  with  others  who  were.  The 
Eightieth  (3i7th-320th  regiments),  also  National 
Army,  which  was  the  Blue  Ridge  Division  under 
Major  General  Adelbert  Cronkhite,  had  something 
of  the  quality  of  the  Thirtieth  in  lean  and  muscular 
bodies  that  are  bred  out  of  doors.  These  National 
Army  divisions  had  a  common  character  which 
seemed  singularly  national;  and  something  about 
them  carried  the  suggestion  that  now  that  they  had 
arrived  the  United  States  was  really  in  France. 

We  had  organized  Second  Corps  headquarters 
in  the  British  area  under  command  of  Major  Gen- 
eral George  W.  Read,  with  officers  who  knew  the 
French  system  of  training  and  now  were  seeing  the 
British  system  applied,  their  purpose  being,  of  course, 
to  connect  up  the  two  in  an  organization  which  would 
make  the  most  of  American  characteristics.  Some  of 
these  officers  began  broadening  their  a' s  after  a  time, 
quite  unconsciously,  and  some  were  taking  to  after- 
noon tea,  also  unconsciously,  perhaps.  They  were 
not  using  as  many  gestures  as  our  officers  who  were 
with  the  French.  Indeed,  thanks  to  a  common  lan- 
guage, a  good  deal  of  energy  was  saved  in  this 
respect  by  training  with  the  British,  if  you  were  to 
add  up  the  sum  for  270,000  men.     All  our  equip- 


DIVISIONS  WITH  THE  ENGLISH    287 

ment,  including  rifles  in  place  of  our  own  which  were 
stored,  being  British,  we  were  quite  essentially  a  part 
of  the  British  army  for  the  time  being.  Our  divi- 
sions, which  had  been  inculcated  in  the  principles  of 
trench  warfare  by  Allied  tutors  in  the  camps  at  home, 
arrived  to  find  that  tactics  had  changed  as  the  result 
of  the  March  offensive,  while  General  Pershing's 
message  home  in  August,  19 17,  advocating  open 
warfare  drills,  revealed  him  as  a  true  prophet  to 
the  latest  forces  to  come  under  his  command. 

The  training  with  the  British  was  in  three  phases : 
First,  each  division  went  through  a  period  of  instruc- 
tion from  a  British  division  assigned  to  it.  Then  we 
went  into  the  trenches,  first  with  our  men  alternating 
individually  with  the  British,  then  alternating  by  pla- 
toons and  finally  by  battalions.  The  third  would  be 
such  an  experience  as  the  destiny  of  battle  provided. 
With  the  Fourth,  the  Twenty-eighth  and  the  Seventy- 
seventh  it  was  to  be  the  Marne  offensive,  although  it 
might  have  been  the  emergency  which  was  mentioned 
in  the  Abbeville  agreement,  had  there  been  another 
great  German  offensive  against  the  British  lines. 
The  places  where  we  were  "  to  die  in  our  tracks  " 
were  assigned  to  our  different  divisions  as  soon 
as  they  entered  Phase  B,  in  the  elaborate  support- 
line  trenches  which  ran  in  deep  traverses  across  the 
land  for  the  whole  length  of  the  British  front.  The 
maps  which  German  aviators  made  of  these,  show- 
ing firm  and  clear  on  the  background  of  the  fields, 
must  have  been  enlightening  to  Ludendorff  in  con- 
sidering the  feasibility  of  driving  the  British  army 
into  the  sea. 

Recurring  to  the  influences  on  morale,  so  strik- 


288  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ingly  exhibited  in  our  part  in  the  resistance  to  the 
German  Marne  offensive,  the  sight  of  our  troops 
behind  the  British  lines  meant  more  to  the  Briton  in 
April,  when  the  British  were  reorganizing  from  the 
terrific  experience  in  the  last  days  of  March,  and  in 
May  and  June,  when  they  were  expecting  another 
offensive,  than  an  unemotional  people  could  express. 
All  the  English-speaking  world  had  its  soldiers 
in  that  area  where  British  tenacity  had  saved  the 
channel  ports  from  giving  Germany  an  Atlantic  base. 
It  was  Britain  which,  early  in  the  war,  had  reserves 
of  capital  and  men;  which  gave  of  her  money  with 
the  prodigality  of  her  wealth  and  her  stake  In  the 
war  to  the  other  Allies,  trying  to  hold  up  Russia, 
sending  coal  and  iron  to  Italy,  nursing  the  little 
Allied  nations,  maintaining  her  forces  in  India,  scat- 
tering Her  troops  far  and  wide  and  holding  the  seas. 
When  Britain  counted  her  dead  in  nearly  a  million, 
when  Her  gold  Had  flowed  abroad  requiring  that  she 
must  become  a  borrower,  we  came  to  play  something 
of  the  part  she  had  played  as  the  banker  of  men 
and  funds,  energy  and  resources.  Greeks,  Poles, 
Italians,  Hungarians,  Bohemians,  Jews  were  among 
our  numbers  fighting  for  the  principles  which  had 
kept  the  British  Isles  an  asylum  for  exiles.  Britain 
might  stand  for  an  inheritance  of  blood  to  only  a 
portion  of  us,  but  she  did  stand  for  a  certain  heritage 
throughout  the  world,  if  we  except  Ireland,  that  was 
above  race  to  all  of  us.  There  were  Irish,  too,  in 
our  divisions,  more  men  of  Irish  descent  by  far  in  the 
American  army  than  in  the  British — which  is  some- 
thing to  think  about.  We  had  no  Irish  or  Italian 
or  Scotch,  not  even  a  German  question  at  home. 


DIVISIONS  WITH  THE  ENGLISH    289" 

We  were  as  different  from  the  British  as  climate, 
association  and  the  melting-pot  were  bound  to  make 
us.  For  a  Frenchman  we  would  make  allowances 
for  differences  in  habits  and  customs,  as  we  expected 
them  to  be  different;  but  speaking  the  same  lan- 
guage, the  American  and  the  Englishman  sometimes 
take  it  for  granted  that  we  should  be  alike,  and  a 
ready  medium  for  exchanging  ideas  only  confirms 
the  superficial  differences.  A  man  from  Iowa  might 
wonder  why  anybody  who  spoke  the  English  lan- 
guage should  have  a  Cockney  accent  or  that  of  the 
miner  from  Cornwall;  and  the  man  of  Whitechapel 
or  Cornwall  might  wonder  how  any  man  could  have 
the  Iowa  accent.  How  on  earth  could  English  sol- 
diers, speaking  our  language,  take  tea  for  breakfast 
instead  of  coffee,  and  tea  in  the  afternoon,  and  eat 
such  quantities  of  cheese? 

We  are  emotional  and  quick  and  most  articulate; 
the  Englishman  is  sentimental,  phlegmatic  and  inar- 
ticulate. With  the  Englishman  a  certain  amount  of 
controversial  "  grousing,"  as  he  calls  it,  is  a  mental 
stimulus  or  pastime.  The  English  privates,  no  less 
than  the  French,  did  not  miss  their  opportunity  of 
impressing  our  tenderfeet  with  a  veteran's  wisdom; 
and  the  way  it  expressed  itself  at  the  British  front 
was  characteristic  of  English  humor.  According  to 
British  soldier  talk  to  our  soldiers  the  Germans  had 
about  done  for  them.  They  told  harrowing  tales  of 
retreat  and  might  say  very  soberly  that  the  thing  to 
do  when  you  saw  the  German  coming  was  to  run  and 
then  you  might  escape.  The  Yank  was  informed 
that  Tf  he  did  not  have  his  head  taken  off  by  a  shell 
when  he  went  into  the  trenches  he  would  be  gassed. 


290  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

The  thing  was  to  keep  your  helmet  and  your  gas 
mask  on  and  your  legs  free.  In  fact,  this  war  had 
gone  about  far  enough.  Everybody  was  all  in.  And 
the  longer  the  Yank  listened  to  him  the  more  the 
Englishman  piled  on  the  agony. 

"  All  the  matter  with  you  is  you've  got  cold  feet !  " 
the  American  who  had  come  across  the  Atlantic  to 
take  Berlin  might  say;  and  the  Briton  might  reply: 
"  This  is  spring.  You  wait  until  winter.  The  shells 
bury  you  in  the  mud,  which  is  like  ice."  If  the 
American  replied,  "  Come  off  1  You  can't  get  my 
goat !  "  there  might  be  an  end  of  the  gloom,  which 
the  Englishman  was  secretly  enjoying,  after  the 
phrase  was  interpreted;  and  the  Englishman  might 
say,  grinningly:  "You'll  do,  Yank."  A  good  deal 
of  interpreting  of  slang  phrases  was  required.  As 
one  of  our  men  said:  "  It's  at  the  British  front  that 
you  do  need  an  interpreter.  At  the  French  front  you 
gesture." 

When  the  Englishman  begins  talking  about  being 
"  all  in  "  and  magnifying  the  fighting  qualities  of  the 
German  it  is  a  healthy  sign.  It  means  that  he  is 
awake  to  the  situation.  When  he  takes  the  contrary^ 
view  and  seems  perfectly  satisfied  with  his  prowess 
he  is  in  more  danger  of  being  caught  napping.  The 
careless  way  that  the  English  had  of  speaking  of 
their  work  deceived  us  a  little  at  first;  but  later  we 
learned  that  although  an  Englishman  may  not  have 
our  versatility,  he  knows  his  own  job  thoroughly. 
Our  men  admired  the  way  the  British  looked  after 
horses  and  kept  up  their  transport  and  their  guns, 
and  liked  their  cleanliness  and  their  reality  when  we 
came  to  know  them  better.    After  we  had  been  in  the 


DIVISIONS  WITH  THE  ENGLISH     291" 

trenches  with  them  and  realized  what  they  endured, 
we  appreciated  their  stubborn  and  unyielding  char- 
acter. 

The  Canadians,  who  live  only  across  the  border 
from  us,  seemed  like  ourselves.  Oversea  cosmopoli- 
tanism put  us  immediately  in  touch  with  the  Aus- 
tralasians, the  true  cosmopolitans  among  the  Allies 
being  the  overseas  troops.  They  have  traveled.  As 
for  the  Scotch,  our  men  called  them  "  sisters."  We 
got  on  well  with  the  Scotch.  The  burr  of  the  man  in 
kilts  held  every  American  soldier  under  a  spell. 

We  learned  much  and  saw  much  with  the  British. 
Whether  or  not  the  British  learned  anything  new 
about  the  Yanks,  which  changed  their  previously  con- 
ceived notions  about  us,  is  for  them  to  say.  They 
were  surely  surprised  a  little  at  our  discipline.  No 
European  quite  expected  discipline  of  Americans;  or 
that  we  had  a  general  of  Pershing's  type  on  the  list 
of  our  little  regular  army. 

Our  divisions  which  trained  with  the  British  had 
an  experience  which  they  will  prize  in  the  future  as 
they  recollect  their  European  tour.  Some  of  them 
had  gFimpses  of  England  itself,  and  they  like  rural 
England  particularly.  They  saw  the  Irish  Sea  and 
the  British  Channel,  too.  They  were  to  know  the 
British  army  as  well  as  the  French  army;  and  it  is 
the  British  front  which  gives  you  the  most  confined, 
the  most  concrete  impression  of  war. 

As  a  spectacle  of  shell-torn  earth,  calling  up 
memories  of  hideous,  concentrated  strife,  Verdun  is 
perhaps  still  the  classic  example;  but  the  Ypres 
salient  gives  the  true  Impression  of  the  ceaseless  mill 
of  war  with  no  relief  of  the  spectacular  to  the  eye. 


292  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Where  back  of  the  line  from  north  of  Amiens  to 
the  Swiss  border  an  hour  or  less  than  an  hour  takes 
you  away  from  the  external  evidences  of  war,  and 
the  roads  seem  to  stretch  without  end  into  a  peaceful, 
thriving  land,  all  the  roads  running  back  from  the 
British  front  speak  war  clear  to  the  crowded  bases 
where  the  men  and  material  of  war  are  arriving. 
You  are  never  quite  away  from  the  ambulances  and 
the  transport. 

For  four  years  the  British  had  been  imposing  the 
machinery  of  war  and  the  structures  of  war,  building 
roads  and  railroads,  upon  that  stretch  between  the 
battle  line  and  the  sea.  A  Channel  crossing  on  a 
crowded  leave  boat  only  emphasized  the  same  effect. 
The  fighting  ground  for  the  defense  of  the  Channel 
had  grown  much  narrower  since  the  March  offensive. 
Amiens,  the  largest  town  in  the  British  area,  was 
deserted  and  under  shell  fire.  Abbeville  was  con- 
gested beyond  description,  and  the  great  main  high- 
way from  Abbeville  to  Fruges  had  a  continuous  pro- 
cession of  traffic.  On  every  hand  there  was  cease- 
less labor  in  preparing  defenses.  Those  who  know 
the  British  were  not  surprised  that  Ludendorff  found 
these  defenses  too  strong  to  attack,  or  at  the  results 
of  the  British  offensive  of  August  and  September. 


XXIII 


OUR   ARMY  TRAVELS 

Railroad  trains  everywhere  full  of  Americans — Moving  a  circus 
a  small  affair  compared  to  moving  a  division — Entraining 
a  division — 'Business  of  conducting  war  is  not  all  fighting — 
Varied  accomplishments  of  a  good  lieutenant — Swearing  of 
no  use  in  modern  armies — Loading  kitchens  and  machine  guns 
on  flat  cars — Departure  of  a  troop  train — Streams  of  young, 
vigorous  Amerioan  life  flowing  through  France. 

It  happened  that  I  was  in  the  British  sector  when 
four  of  the  divisions  which  had  trained  there  were 
moving  south.  Two  were  to  become  a  part  of  the 
new  Paris  group  of  American  divisions  ready  for  the 
defense  of  Paris  and  two  were  on  their  way  to  Al- 
sace. We  were  surely  a  traveling  army,  our  newly 
arrived  divisions  on  the  move  from  the  ports  and 
our  older  ones  being  switched  back  and  forth  as  occa- 
sion demanded. 

Whenever  you  saw  a  train  stopping  at  a  crossing 
you  were  surprised  if  there  were  not  Americans  on 
board,  swinging  their  legs  from  the  bottoms  of  box 
cars  and  sticking  their  heads  out  of  windows.  If 
they  were  fresh  from  home  they  very  likely  might 
be  in  campaign  hats,  which  looked  as  odd  to  us  now 
as  the  overseas  caps  to  them.  They  were  wide-eyed 
with  curiosity  at  everything  they  saw.  Their  essays 
in  French  had  the  primer  book  stiffness  and  diffi- 
dence which  made  their  enunciation  indistinct  even 

293 


294  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

when  they  had  a  vocabulary  and  a  passable  accent. 
If  they  had  been  long  in  France  their  journey  was  an 
old  story.  They  called  out  to  the  people  in  collo- 
quial French,  learned  by  ear,  with  linguistic  confi- 
dence ;  and  the  people  laughed  and  talked  back.  If 
veterans  met  tenderfeet  at  a  railroad  station  or  any- 
where else,  why,  veterans  had  their  turn  at  "  kid- 
ding "  tenderfeet,  but  without  the  same  effect  as 
when  persiflage  came  from  the  French  and  the 
British.  You  need  not  be  as  polite  in  talking  to  your 
own  people  as  to  Allies. 

One  day,  when  a  trainload  of  Americans  was  pass- 
ing a  crossing,  there  was  a  yell  from  one  of  the  sol- 
diers standing  by  the  gate  and  another  from  a  man 
on  the  train.  I  heard  shouts  exchanged  about  father 
and  Joe  and  Anna  before  I  saw  a  brown  face  that 
was  leaning  out  of  a  box  car  disappear  around  a 
curve.  The  two  were  brothers  who  had  not  met  for 
a  year.  One  was  on  his  way  to«the  Woevre  and  the 
other  to  Chateau-Thierry.  They  might  not  meet 
again  for  a  year;  and  again,  within  a  month  they 
might  be  charging  in  regiments  side  by  side. 

When  a  division  moved  by  train,  all  the  twenty- 
seven  thousand  men,  their  rolling  kitchens,  their 
machine-gun  carts,  their  water  carts,  their  supply 
wagons,  the  artillery  and  its  caissons  and  its  horses 
must  go  on  a  series  of  trains  and  they  must  be 
fed  on  the  way ;  and  when  they  detrain  they  must  be 
marched  off  as  a  complete  unit  into  action  or  to 
their  billets.  I  remember  being  impressed  by  an 
article  in  a  magazine  about  the  system  of  moving  a 
circus  from  town  to  town  by  trains.  A  circus  is 
a  small  affair  compared  to  an  American  division; 


^  OUR  ARMY  TRAVELS  295 

but  the  French  had  been  moving  French  divisions 
for  three  years  and  it  is  no  more  nor  less  than  mov- 
ing any  other  kind  of  traffic.  French  divisions  were 
always  going  from  quiet  sectors  to  battle  sectors 
and  back  again  to  quiet  sectors.  The  French,  who 
seem  rather  unsystematic  from  the  lack  of  type- 
writers and  card-index  systems,  are  really  most  sys- 
tematic, and  accomplish  order  in  their  own  way  with 
their  bordereaux  and  neat  chirography  in  place  of 
typewriting. 

French  military  trains  are  uniform  in  composition, 
with  thirty  box  cars  and  seventeen  flat  cars  and  one 
officers'  coach  and  two  cabooses,  with  the  flat  cars 
in  the  middle  of  the  train.  Given  the  number  of 
trains  of  this  kind  required  for  a  division  and  the 
right  of  way,  and  the  rest  is  as  simple  as  any  other 
standardized  operation.  Entraining  and  detraining 
must  become  automatic,  too,  from  experience,  as  it 
became  with  us  after  a  while  and  promptly,  con- 
sidering that  we  were  in  a  strange  land  and  that  the 
officers  of  each  division  had  to  proceed  on  written 
instructions  until  they  had  learned  details  which  were 
second  nature  to  officers  of  a  veteran  French  division. 

I  have  in  mind  a  picture  of  the  entraining  of  a 
division  which  serves  to  describe  one  of  the  most 
common  of  army  operations  in  France.  It  is  in  the 
late  afternoon  before  entraining  begins,  and  all  the 
division  is  still  in  its  billets  scattered  over  an  area  of 
six  or  seven  square  miles.  There  are  the  dozen 
pages  of  schedule  sent  out  from  division  headquarters 
to  show  at  what  hour  every  unit  is  to  move  and 
where  it  will  entrain.  One  officer  for  every  village 
which  we  are  to  occupy  as  our  new  billets  has  gone 


296  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

on  a  day  ahead,  in  order  that  the  unit  occupying  each 
village  shall  find  its  quarters  already  assigned  when 
it  arrives,  which  may  be  in  the  dead  of  night. 

An  entraining  officer,  detailed  for  each  unit,  must 
see  that  each  unit  is  properly  entrained  and  go  with 
the  last  train  carrying  the  unit.  He  must  make  a 
note  of  any  damages  to  the  train,  such  as  broken 
doors  or  missing  lanterns,  in  order  that  we  may  not 
be  charged  by  the  French  government  for  break- 
age for  which  we  are  not  responsible.  This  busi- 
ness of  conducting  war  away  from  home  is  not  all 
fighting.  Any  good  lieutenant  must  be  able  to  make 
a  map,  lead  a  charge,  carry  out  endless  inspections 
and  be  an  accountant,  a  diplomatist,  a  disciplinarian, 
and  never  appear  perplexed  or  the  worse  for  wear. 

Water  carts  must  be  filled,  forage  for  the  horses 
and  wood  for  making  coffee  in  the  rolling  kitchens 
must  be  provided;  any  sick  must  be  evacuated  before 
entraining,  the  local  billeting  requisitions  signed  and 
complaints  of  damage  to  property  in  the  village 
looked  after  before  departure ;  and  twenty-four  hours 
after  detraining  the  name  of  every  officer  and  man 
missing  must  be  reported.  For  all  the  twenty-sev^en 
thousand  men  must  be  checked  off.  Some  may  miss 
the  train.  Soldiers  have  even  been  known  to  fall 
off  the  train,  and  to  run  out  to  buy  a  box  of  cigarettes 
when  a  train  stopped  and  to  return  to  find  the  train 
gone,  leaving  them  stranded  somewhere  in  France — 
which  meant  classification  as  casuals. 

It  would  be  easy  to  go  into  further  details,  as  the 
regimental  commander  will  tell  you.  His  baggage 
packed,  he  is  ready  to  say  good-by  to  the  house  he 
has  occupied  for  two  nights  as  his  home.    He  is  as 


OUR  ARMY  TRAVELS  297 

used  to  change  of  quarters  as  commercial  travelers 
are  to  changing  hotels;  and  he  has  eaten  and  slept 
under  the  patronage  of  family  portraits  of  grand- 
father and  grandmother  and  the  later  generations, 
done  in  oil  in  old  chateaux  and  in  crayons  in  a  farm- 
house. One  of  his  battalions  is  marching  past  the 
house  on  its  way  to  the  station  and  he  looks  out  of 
the  window  lovingly  at  these,  his  men,  whom  he 
trains  and  leads.  There  is  no  love  that  man  bears 
man  which  is  like  that  of  a  colonel  for  his  men, 
except  that  of  a  major  for  his  battalion,  a  captain 
for  his  company  and  a  lieutenant  for  his  platoon. 
I  have  seen  major  generals  slip  away  from  the  pres- 
sure of  staff  work  for  the  relief  and  inspiration  of 
watching  their  soldiers  march  past. 

The  colonel  and  his  regiment  are  off  into  a  new 
country.  They  do  not  know  the  town  where  they 
will  stop  or  what  they  will  do  when  they  come 
to  the  town.  He  has  plenty  of  time  to  catch  up  with 
his  men  and  remains  in  his  billet  cleaning  up  "  paper 
work."  It  ia  near  midnight  when  he  arrives  at  the 
station.  Every  important  French  station  has  a  mili- 
tary platform  along  one  of  the  sidings  in  the  yards. 
It  is  flush  with  the  car  bottoms.  If  it  were  not,  the 
loading  of  one  military  train  would  require  the  time 
that  it  now  takes  to  load  a  score  of  trains  and  a 
great  deal  more  than  fifty  times  the  language;  for 
a  whole  division  entrains  with  less  language  of  the 
lightning  variety  than  I  have  heard  exploited  by  the 
old  army  teamsters  in  negotiating  one  slough  with 
the  regimental  transport.  That  kind  of  thing,  al- 
though it  gives  a  picturesque  atmosphere  to  narra- 
tives, is  no  longer  in  good  form.     Swearing  may  be 


298  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

useful  in  small  armies,  but  it  has  proved  of  no  assist- 
ance to  large  armies  in  modern  war. 

One  train  is  ready  to  depart  and  awaits  the  whis- 
tle. A  sergeant  who  is  still  on  the  platform  goes 
up  to  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man  who  has  established  him- 
self in  a  booth  with  chocolate  and  cigarettes  for  sale 
and  asks,  "  Have  you  got  a  hatchet  I  can  use  for  a 
minute  ?  "  That  Y.  M.  C.  A.  man,  who  had  been  a 
college  professor,  says  gently  and  politely,  "  No,  I 
haven't  a  hatchet."  The  sergeant  looks  disappointed 
and  even  surprised.  To  his  thinking,  the  "  Y  "  was 
missing  a  bet  in  not  having  hatchets.  The  whistle 
blows  and  the  sergeant  jumps  on  board;  and  after 
that  loaded  train  has  gone,  an  empty  one  comes 
puffing  in  out  of  the  darkness  of  the  yards.  Its 
passengers  and  freight  are  already  on  the  platform. 
The  horses  are  unhitched  from  the  rolling  kitchens, 
unharnessed  and  put  in  the  box  cars.  After  a  few 
such  experiences  they  make  no  protest:  They  become 
as  used  to  entering  box  cars  as  stables  and  probably 
appreciate  the  rest  v/hich  the  journey  means. 

"  Now,  everybody  hang  his  equipment  on  the 
fence  and  take  off  his  blouse  and  roll  up  his  sleeves," 
says  a  sergeant  to  his  men. 

"  Roll  your  sleeves  high  enough  and  maybe  you'll 
be  a  corporal,"  one  man  remarks. 

"  Anything  might  happen  if  I  get  ambitious,"  is 
the  response.  They  are  all  cheery.  They  have 
learned  the  soldier  spirit. 

Sleeves  rolled  up,  they  pull  down  the  sidings  of 
the  flat  cars  and  begin  pushing  the  kitchens  on  board. 
This  is  a  process  which  is  also  carefully  indicated  in 
written  instructions.    One  after  another  the  kitchens 


OUR  ARMY  TRAVELS  299 

are  navigated  to  their  places.  They  will  make  coffee 
en  route  for  the  men,  if  the  men  do  not  get  it  at  the 
coffee  stations,  and  they  will  start  cooking  as  soon  as 
they  are  detrained,  while  they  follow  along  the  line 
of  march.  Or,  it  may  be  that  it  is  the  machine-gun 
carts  that  are  to  be  loaded.  The  led  horses  of  the 
machine-gun  carts  and  the  men  who  lead  them,  ap- 
pearing now  as  dark  silhouettes  in  the  moonlight, 
always  have  the  same  attitude  as  if  man  and  horse 
were  of  a  piece;  the  man  used  to  the  stride  of  lead- 
ing, the  horse  to  being  led.  The  gunners  do  not  keep 
step  when  they  follow  along  with  their  carts  on  the 
march.  Their  attitude  is  characteristic  of  an  inde- 
pendent and  mobile  force  at  call,  such  as  that  of  naval 
destroyers  or  the  cavalry. 

"  We  are  the  machine  gunners,"  they  seem  to  say. 
"  We  are  coming  along.  Never  mind  playing  your 
marching  music  for  us.  You'll  want  us,  and  we'll  be 
there  with  our  pepper  boxes." 

Or,  it  may  be  that  it  is  the  artillery  which  comes 
rolling  up  on  the  military  platform  with  its  manner 
of  wheeled  and  mounted  regality.  The  75's  are  al- 
most as  easily  put  on  board  as  the  rolling  kitchens, 
when  gunners  have  learned  the  trick;  and  gunners  are 
supposed  to  learn  all  tricks  that  concern  wheels  and 
horses.  The  155's  require  more  manipulation  and 
more  effort. 

All  the  cars  are  loaded ;  the  men  have  been  counted 
off  in  groups  as  the  allotment  to  each  car  is  assigned; 
all  the  sidings  of  the  flat  cars  are  up  and  fast.  Every 
man  has  a  cooked  ration  and  two  days'  travel  ra- 
tions. The  officers,  too,  are  in  the  passenger  coach, 
where  they  intertwine  legs  with  their  baggage  as  they 


300  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

stretch  for  the  night.  Two  rows  of  horses'  heads 
face  each  other  in  box  cars,  with  their  drivers  oc- 
cupying the  intervening  space.  Upon  the  floors  of 
the  cars,  which  are  altogether  occupied  by  human 
passengers,  the  men  have  settled  themselves.  An 
occasional  remark  is  heard  above  the  hum  of  their 
talk.  The  smoke  stacks  of  the  rolling  kitchens  and 
the  big  guns  lifting  up  their  muzzles  rise  above  the 
array  of  wheels  on  the  flat  cars.  The  whistle  blows 
and  another  train  moves  out,  and  thus  trains  con- 
tinue moving  out  from  the  entraining  stations — usu- 
ally there  is  more  than  one — until  all  the  division  has 
departed. 

Each  train  seems  to  start  with  a  kind  of  protest; 
and  the  note  of  the  French  engine  and  of  the  French 
cars  with  their  light  bodies  and  wheels  is  a  baritone, 
I  should  say,  compared  to  the  roaring  bass  of  our 
great  trains  at  home.  Speed  is  not  a  part  of  the 
plan,  but  system  and  dependability  are  most  essen- 
tial. There  are  stops  at  stations  and  on  sidings  and 
in  tunnels  and  always  time  to  count  the  telegraph 
poles,  even  the  fence  posts  if  there  were  many  in 
France.  On  board  trains  our  men  wind  in  among 
the  green  heights  of  the  spursof  the  Alps,  beside 
swift,  whirling  streams,  along  the  banks  of  the  Seine 
and  the  Marne,  across  the  plains,  all  up  and  down 
France,  seeing  the  streets  of  some  villages  close  at 
hand  and  other  villages  as  blots  of  red  roofs  in  the 
distance;  and  off  the  trains,  in  scattered  detachments, 
our  men  form  communities,  or,  marching  here  and 
there,  they  are  as  streams  of  a  young,  vigorous  life 
flowing  through  France  to  the  battle  line. 


XXIV 


BUSY  DAYS  FOR  THE  C.-IN-C. 

Strenuous  times  caring  for  a  million  men — ^Di£5culties  of  handling 
an  untrained  army  three  thousand  miles  away  from  home — 
Ability  of  General  Pershing — His  daily  working  hours  from 
7  A.M.  to  midnight — ^A  general  who  looked  like  a  general  to 
his  men — His  aides — A  dynamo  of  energy — A  keen  judge  of 
men — Rarely  overlooked  or  forgot  anything — Never  admitted 
impossibilities  nor  allowed  pessimism — "Make  it  brief" — The 
"  Pershing  mentality  " — A  new  sort  of  Americanism. 

We  had  a  million  men  in  France.  Where  in  the 
early  days  of  the  expedition  we  had  been  secretive 
about  our  numbers  lest  their  publication  discourage 
the  Allies  and  encourage  the  Central  Powers,  Wash- 
ington might  now  announce  the  round,  ear-filling 
totals  for  the  edification  of  Berlin  as  well  as  of 
Paris  and  London.  If  the  million  had  been  con- 
centrated in  one  area,  the  problem  of  caring  for 
them  would  have  been  gigantic  enough.  With  fight- 
ing divisions  scattered  along  the  battle  line,  and  di- 
visions in  training  scattered  back  of  the  line,  G.-4 
of  the  General  Staff  and  the  S.  O.  S.,  which  had  to 
follow  up  divisions  with  supplies  wherever  they  went, 
had  little  time  to  spare  for  reading  light  novels. 

General  Pershing,  who  had  urged  the  sending  of 
the  million  and  still  another  and  yet  another  million, 
In  order  the  sooner  to  end  the  struggle,  welcomed 
each  addition  to  his  family,  while  he  was  undaunted 
by  the  new  burdens  which  they  and  the  command  in 

301 


302  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  field  of  his  trained  forces  actively  engaged 
brought  to  his  leadership.  Other  Allied  commanders 
directed  old  and  fully  trained  integral  armies  oper- 
ating on  familiar  ground.  They  were  in  as  im- 
mediate touch  with  their  governments  as  General 
Pershing  would  be  if  his  headquarters  were  only  a 
few  hours'  distant  from  Washington  by  automobile. 
His  isolation  from  home  made  his  position  unique 
in  its  manifold  requirements.  He  had  to  iron  out 
many  wrinkles  of  controversy.  Conferences  with 
premiers  as  well  as  with  generals  called  for  his 
counsel;  for  it  would  be  ridiculous  to  conceal  the  fact 
that  when  several  great  nations  are  in  alliance,  dif- 
ferences of  conception  in  policy,  if  not  innate  differ- 
ence in  national  interests,  require  negotiations  in 
effecting  understandings  and  harmony  of  action  on 
many  subjects. 

Our  general  must  see  his  troops,  too,  the  newly 
arrived  divisions  as  well  as  the  divisions  which  were 
fighting.  His  insistence  upon  going  under  fire  was  a 
part  with  his  desire  for  a  close  view  of  the  work  of 
his  commanders  and  their  troops.  Officers  who  knew 
that  there  was  something  wrong  with  an  organiza- 
tion and  yet  hesitated  to  impart  their  view  to  him, 
were  amazed  to  find  how  soon  he  diagnosed  the 
situation  after  a  few  minutes  of  personal  observa- 
tion. His  long  experience  as  a  general  officer,  the 
thoroughness  of  his  training  as  a  soldier  and  his  keen 
understanding  of  human  nature  were  applied  to  those 
essentials  which  are  immutable  whether  an  army 
numbers  ten  thousand  or  a  million  men. 

Even  a  fast  automobile  flying  over  the  good  roads 
of  France  cannot  entirely  eliminate  time  and  dis- 


BUSY  DAYS  FOR  THE  C.-IN-C.      303 

tance.  The  amount  of  traveling  and  the  amount  of 
work  he  was  able  to  do  were  amazing.  The  drive 
that  he  gave  the  A.  E.  F.  was  largely  due  to  his 
own  example  of  industry.  From  seven  in  the  morn- 
ing until  after  midnight,  with  the  exception  of  his 
mealtimes,  he  was  unceasing  in  his  application.  Yet 
he  never  seemed  to  be  hurried,  he  never  showed  the 
signs  of  war  fatigue  which  brought  down  many 
strong  men.  In  any  event,  we  were  always  certain, 
too,  that  the  man  at  the  top  was  keeping  his  head; 
and  one  took  it  for  granted  that  his  recreation  must 
be  in  his  occasional  horseback  rides  and  walks,  and 
His  time  for  reflection  while  he  sat  silently  with  his 
aide-de-camp  in  his  long  motor  rides. 

That  is,  he  was  never  hurried,  unless  after  a  hard 
day  in  the  office,  he  was  away  to  the  troops,  when 
the  eagerness  for  departure  possessed  him  in  a 
fashion  that  made  him  as  young  in  spirit  as  when 
he  was  a  lieutenant  of  cavalry.  The  soldiers  knew 
that  he  was  their  general.  He  looked  as  a  com- 
mander-in-chief ought  to  look,  to  their  way  of  think- 
ing; and  this  means  a  great  deal  to  the  men  who  bear 
the  burden  of  pack  and  rifle  and  the  brunt  of  battle. 

As  the  pressure  from  his  scattered  and  growing 
forces  increased,  no  one  person  saw  much  of  him 
except  the  members  of  his  immediate  personal  staff 
and  the  indefatigable  aide-de-camp  who  was  always 
with  him.  In  the  early  days  he  had  foreseen  the 
demands  which  would  require  the  delegation  of 
authority  in  the  future.  With  the  aid  of  Major 
General  Harbord,  his  first  Chief  of  Staff,  he  had 
built  a  machine  which  would  automatically  expand  to 
meet  the  requirements  of  the  million  and  the  two  mil- 


304        ,     AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

lion  men  who  were  to  come  while  he  was  left  free  to 
direct  his  army  in  action.  Major  General  William 
McAndrew,  who  had  established  and  directed  the 
system  of  schools  which  were  to  be  the  guide  of  our 
army's  tactics,  came  to  take  General  Harbord's  place 
as  the  general  manager  of  the  unprecedented  organi- 
zation; while  General  Harbord,  after  his  command 
of  a  brigade  and  then  of  a  division  in  the  field,  was 
given  the  task  of  commanding  the  S.  O.  S.,  which, 
with  its  giant  problem  of  supplying  the  millions  with 
their  food  and  all  that  they  needed  for  the  spring 
offensive,  was  the  second  most  responsible  post  in 
France. 

Wherever  the  C.-in-C.  went  he  always  carried  his 
book  of  graphics  which  kept  him  informed  up  to 
date  of  the  exact  numbers  and  stations  of  all  our 
troops  and  the  state  of  shipping  and  supplies,  al- 
though his  memory  seemed  to  have  these  facts  in 
call.  Couriers  overtook  him  at  the  day's  end,  wher- 
ever he  was,  with  papers  which  required  his  decision; 
the  telephone  could  reach  him  if  something  vital  re- 
quired immediate  attention. 

"  The  C.-in-C. 's  here,"  the  word  was  passed 
around  when  he  returned  to  Headquarters  from  one 
of  his  trips.  Well-known  signs  attested  his  presence. 
The  only  car  with  four  stars  on  the  windshield  was 
in  front  of  the  main  entrance  to  Headquarters;  an 
orderly  was  at  the  little  table  in  the  hall  beside  the 
door  wliich  bore  the  name  "  General  Pershing," 
and  there  were  waiting  major  generals  and  brigadier 
generals  in  the  anteroom. 

But  we  also  knew  of  the  C.-in-C. 's  presence  by 
something  electric  that  ran  through  all  the  offices; 


BUSY  DAYS  FOR  THE  C.-IN-C.      305 

the  vitalizing  impulse  of  the  commander.  "  Another 
hectic  day,"  as  the  Chief  of  Staff  would  say  in  the 
evening  after  the  General's  return.  The  General 
went  about  France  distributing  hectic  days.  A  few 
words  from  him  might  set  a  chief  of  section  a  task 
that  would  start  him  on  the  rush  for  personnel  and 
material  to  carry  out  some  plan  that  would  have 
looked  enormous  even  to  a  celebrated  captain  of 
industry,  or  he  might  have  his  proposition  turned 
down.  Each  chief  of  section  came  to  the  C.-in-C. 
with  important  papers  to  be  signed;  each  chief  was 
supposed  to  know  the  subjects  which  interested  him 
at  the  time  as  they  affected  the  general  policy  which 
the  C.-in-C.  had  in  mind.  Sometimes  he  reached 
down  through  the  channels  of  administration  and 
took  up  a  seemingly  small  problem  which  only  he 
thought  vital  until  later  events  proved  its  signifi- 
cance. It  was  he  who  said,  *'  Stop !  "  or  "  Full  speed 
ahead!" 

There  was  enlightenment  in  studying  the  faces 
that  came  out  of  that  office  of  offices  of  the  A.  E.  F. 
The  personal  element  was  not  missing.  With  "  make 
good  "  the  test  for  everyone,  with  ambition  driving 
everyone  to  the  utmost  endeavor,  with  the  desire  for 
power  and  for  approval  always  besieging  the  straight 
figure  at  the  desk  between  two  windows,  who  had 
the  authority,  which  military  concentration  requires, 
of  making  and  unmaking  careers,  he  had  only  one 
thought,  he  could  have  only  one,  and  that  was  to 
find  the  best  agents  to  carry  out  his  plans,  by  tests 
and  by  processes  of  elimination.  He  was  deciding 
on  more  than  the  matter  in  hand;  he  was  keeping 
watch  of  the  human  element.    Was  this  subordinate 


3o6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

getting  stale?  Was  he  beginning  to  show  nerves? 
Was  he  becoming  greedy  of  authority  for  authority's 
sake? 

A  section  or  a  departmental  head  might  emerge 
from  the  office  thinking,  "  The  General  does  not 
understand.  I  couldn't  get  any  action  out  of 
him  at  all.  Talked  about  it  and  decided  nothing, 
when "  To  this  officer's  mind  the  fate  of  na- 
tions depended  upon  the  immediate  adoption  of  his 
suggestion.  At  the  next  session  he  might  emerge 
thinking,  "  J.  J.  P.  was  quick  on  the  trigger  to-day. 
Approved  everything!    Now  we  fly!  " 

There  were  things  that  could  wait,  some  things 
that  if  they  waited  would  care  for  themselves,  and 
other  things  that  required  instant  action  and  more 
of  it  on  a  larger  scale  than  the  proposals  had 
suggested.  The  man  who  had  all  the  reins  in  his 
hand,  all  information  at  his  command,  alone  knew 
where  he  was  going  and  what  he  needed  in  order 
to  reach  his  goal.  When  he  intimated  that  he 
wanted  a  thing  done  and  someone  in  the  channels 
of  administration,  while  not  insubordinate,  had  a 
different  view,  reenforced  by  the  thought  that  prob- 
ably the  busy  C.-in-C.  had  forgotten  his  instructions, 
a  telephone  call  might  bring  an  officer  in  front  of 
his  desk  to  answer  the  question,  "  What  about—'- — ? 
It  hasn't  been  done  yet." 

To  men  working  in  compartments,  who  forgot  that 
he  had  the  key  of  inquiry  into  all  compartments,  it 
was  surprising  how  much  the  C.-in-C.  knew  and 
sometimes  how  he  managed  to  know  it;  so  very  sur- 
prising that  it  became  embarrassing  for  certain  of- 
ficers.    Subordinate  chiefs  might  explain  difficulties 


BUSY  DAYS  FOR  THE  C.-IN-C.      307 

to  him,  but  they  learned  to  beware  of  saying  that 
a  thing  "  can't  be  done."  He  would  not  admit  that 
anything  could  not  be  done.  They  learned,  too,  that 
they  must  not  bring  any  air  of  pessimism  into  his 
office,  where  his  own  supply  of  vitality  for  communi- 
cation to  others  seemed  inexhaustible. 

Who  at  Headquarters  and  among  the  chiefs  in  the 
field  has  not  seen  his  penciled  notes  with  the  bold 
initials  "  J.  J.  P."  attached  to  papers?  Subordinates 
who  wrote  the  same  kind  of  slips  often  had  scrawl- 
ing, illegible  penmanship;  his  was  as  clear  and  firm 
as  block  letters,  in  keeping  with  the  firm  and  chiseled 
lines  of  his  features.  He  practiced  his  own  text  of 
"  Make  it  brief,"  in  whatever  he  had  to  say. 

"  Cut  this  down  and  we'll  make  it  an  order." — 
*'  A  good  idea !  Have  X.  make  a  memorandum  on 
it." — "  Wait  a  while !  " — "  This  reads  well  in  theory, 
but  it  will  not  work  out  in  practice." — "  Go  ahead!  " 
— "  Tell  H.  I  want  to  see  him  to-morrow  about 
this  I  " — **  That  will  carry  us  on  for  the  present." — 
*'  Use  your  judgment  and  plenty  of  it,  quick  I  "  "  J. 
J.  P."  under  the  legible  script,  never  hurried,  never 
careless,  was  no  less  an  order  than  "  By  Command 
of  General  Pershing  "  in  full,  official  form. 

Aside  from  the  letters  and  orders  dictated  to  his 
big,  silent  stenographer,  who  had  been  with  him  in 
Mexico,  he  wrote  many  by  hand.  When  he  had 
something  of  vital  importance  affecting  policy  he 
would  often  write  that  out  by  hand,  too,  and  correct 
it  and  have  it  copied  and  correct  it  again,  until  it 
satisfied  him.  A  cablegram  to  Washington  did  not 
need  his  signature  for  the  reader  to  know  that  it 
was  written  by  him.     It  was  that  of  a  man  who 


3o8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

knew  what  he  wanted  to  say  and  said  it  very  surely 
and  distinctly.  Subordinate  chiefs  found,  too,  that 
he  was  not  afraid  to  recognize  his  own  mistakes, 
which  possibly  was  one  of  the  reasons  why  he  kept 
growing  with  the  growth  of  his  task. 

"  You  were  right  in  that  suggestion,"  he  would 
say,  or  again,  "  I  went  ahead  too  strong  on  that." 
Again,  a  chief  might  be  called  into  the  office  and 
hear    something   fike   this,    "  I    was    thinking   last 

night "  and  the  C.-in-C.  would  state  his  idea, 

saying,  "  Think  it  over  yourself  and  tell  me  how 
that  strikes  you."  But  always  he  was  C.-in-C. 
Subordinates  must  not  mistake  orders  for  sugges- 
tions or  suggestions  for  orders.  The  thing  which 
held  their  loyalty  with  stronger  bonds  than  those 
of  his  interest  in  men  was  that  spontaneous  human 
quality,  lighted  by  the  smile  of  interest  in  every 
man  and  breaking  out  in  a  laughing  sally  when 
something  caught  his  sense  of  humor.  The  French 
spoke  of  the  "  Pershing  mentality,"  which  meant 
coming  direct  to  the  essentials  of  the  subject  in  hand. 

He  took  an  interest  in  all  the  chaplains  and  the 
welfare  workers,  and  in  everything  that  pertained 
to  the  care  of  the  soldiers.  Subordinates  each  saw 
only  one  professional  side  of  him;  and,  of  course, 
the  supreme  side  was  the  soldier  preparing  his  army 
for  action  and  directing  it  in  action.  Those  who 
wondered  about  his  reason  for  some  decision  sud- 
denly grasped  it  when  they  understood  that  he  was 
looking  out  across  the  country,  away  from  the  red 
tape  of  organization,  which  he  had  cut  remorse- 
lessly, past  the  headquarters  of  commanders  high 
and  low  to  the  men  who  were  fighting,  whose  cour- 


BUSY  DAYS  FOR  THE  C.-IN-C.      309 

age,  morale  and  skill  were  the  vital  human  and  mili- 
tary element. 

A  great  army  formed  of  recruits  was  under  his 
personal  influence.  Before  soldiers  had  been  long 
in  France  they  developed  in  their  bearing  and  in  the 
straight,  level  way  that  they  met  your  glance  that 
spirit  which  says,  "  I  fight  to  win.  I  shall  win !  " 
and  with  that  spirit  a  smile,  a  philosophic  acceptance 
of  what  comes  their  way,  an  upstanding  pride — a 
new  sort  of  Americanism;  that  of  the  determination 
and  enterprise  of  the  individualism  of  the  youth  who 
means  to  get  on  in  the  world,  and  of  the  aimlessness 
of  the  youth  who  stands  at  the  street  corners  with 
his  hands  in  his  pockets,  amalgamated  by  discipline 
and  example  into  a  common  purpose  and  character 
which  would  bring  a  nation  into  a  new  era. 

Had  our  General  done  no  more  than  train  the 
army  and  built  an  organization  for  its  direction,  his 
place  in  history  would  be  quite  secure,  without  regard 
to  how  he  was  to  use  the  weapon  which  he  had 
forged  and  tempered  and  sharpened. 


XXV 

RESOLUTE   STONEWALLING 

Another  German  offensive  in  preparation — Three  hundred  thou- 
sand of  our  men  near  the  Marne — The  Rainbow  Division 
again — Getting  ready  for  the  German  onrush — The  Germans 
as  the  irresistible  movement,  the  Rainbows  as  the  immovable 
object — The  Germans  stopped  in  their  tracks  in  Champagne, 
and  the  Rainbows  helped  to  do  it — The  bulldog  tenacity  of 
four  companies  of  the  Twenty-eighth  Division — The  Third 
Division  at  the  Marne — A  division  that  learned  how  to  fight 
by  fighting — The  Germans  cross  the  Marne — Our  artillery 
makes  the  crossing  difficult — A  slaughter  of  boatloads  of 
Germans  by  American  riflemen — A  railroad  track  that  the 
Germans  never  crossed — The  marvel  of  the  38th  Regiment's 
defense — A   German   attack   that  was   smashed. 

As  the  days  passed,  with  the  Marne  battle  front 
stabilized,  the  daily  intelligence  reports  of  the  Ger- 
man order  of  battle  showed  the  increasing  concen- 
tration of  divisions  for  another  offensive  stroke. 
New  ammunition  dumps  were  appearing  in  front  of 
the  British  and  also  in  Champagne.  The  Germans 
might  strike  in  either  direction  or  in  both. 

This  time  they  did  not  take  the  French  by  surprise. 
Several  days  before  the  attack  all  information  indi- 
cated that  it  would  be  directed  against  the  Allied 
line  from  east  of  Rheims  to  the  region  of  Chateau- 
Thierry.  On  July  13th  I  heard  quite  definitely  that 
the  blow  would  come  on  July  15th,  and  this  was  cor- 
rect. Units  of  American  divisions  were  now  to  face 
the  full  power  of  the  German  army  in  an  attack. 
Experts,  who  had  not  questioned  our  vigor  in  offen- 

310 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING        311 

sive  action,  might  wonder  if  we  were  yet  hardened 
enough  to  withstand  such  an  infernal  artillery  prepa- 
ration and  to  repulse  such  masses  of  infantry  under 
its  support  as  had  broken  through  Allied  trench  sys- 
tems on  March  21st  and  May  27th. 

The  part  that  we  were  to  play,  in  sheer  weight  of 
numbers,  during  the  fourth  German  offensive  and 
in  the  counter-offensive  which  followed  was  signifi- 
cant of  our  growing  power.  Without  counting 
freshly  arrived  divisions  or  divisions  in  reserve  which 
could  be  summoned  for  emergency,  we  had  on  July 
15th  over  three  hundred  thousand  men  either  in 
sectors  on  the  Marne  front  or  in  immediate  support. 
The  German  had  tested  at  Cantigny  and  Vaux  and 
in  Belleau  Wood  the  mettle  of  our  trained  divisions; 
he  was  now  to  test  the  mettle  of  some  which  we  did 
not  regard  as  trained.  His  information  gained  about 
us  at  first  hand  upon  July  15th  must  have  forever 
dissipated  his  dream  of  forcing  such  a  break  in  the 
Allied  front  that  our  numbers  would  be  beaten  in 
detail,  owing  to  the  want  of  cohesion  and  training  in 
the  arriving  American  divisions  which  were  not  yet 
organized  as  an  army. 

On  July  15th,  the  Forty-second  Division  was  in 
Champagne,  near  Perthes,  with  four  and  a  half  bat- 
talions in  an  intermediate  position.  The  name  of 
Perthes  summons  up  recollections  of  the  first  two 
years  of  the  war  when  it  had  been  the  synonym  of 
bitter  and  continued  fighting.  All  the  region  was 
battle  scarred;  it  was  associated  with  some  memory 
of  severe  trench  experiences  in  the  minds  of  French 
veterans. 

The  Forty-second  was  not  long  out  of  the  Baccarat 


312  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

sector,  where  it  maintained  such  a  mastery  over  the 
enemy  as  became  the  Rainbow  Division.  Its  artil- 
lery was  well  trained;  its  organization  running 
smoothly;  its  esprit  de  corps  unsurpassed.  There 
was  nothing  a  comparatively  quiet  sector, — aroused 
to  activity  by  American  initiative, — could  afford 
which  it  had  not  endured,  including  heavy  gassing 
and  intense  artillery  preparations  for  enemy  raids; 
but  that  is  a  different  thing  from  having  concentrated 
within  a  few  hours  more  casualties  than  it  had  suf- 
fered in  two  months  at  Baccarat.  The  French  Staff 
had  looked  the  Forty-second  over  and  believed  in  it 
enough  to  issue  an  order  that  if  the  enemy  broke 
through  in  the  Perthes  sector,  Major  General  Men- 
oher  of  the  Forty-second  was  to  take  command  of 
both  French  and  American  infantry  and  artillery 
in  the  sector.  Practically,  then,  the  final  defense 
would  be  with  us,  and  we  might  consider  for  our 
edification  the  fact  that  each  of  the  four  German 
offensives  had  overwhelmed  nearly  all  the  front-line 
positions  attacked.  There  is  responsibility  for  you, 
Iowa,  Ohio,  New  York,  Alabama,  California,  Illi- 
nois, Maryland  and  all  the  other  states  represented 
in  the  Forty-second. 

The  Frankenstein  of  German  prestige  did  not  in 
the  slightest  depress  the  Rainbows.  There  had  come 
to  them  the  opportunity  to  play  their  part  as  the 
British  and  French  played  it  in  the  first  battle  of 
Ypres,  when  there  were  no  gas  shells  and  artillery 
concentrations  were  comparatively  mild.  Have  your 
gas  masks  ready.  Every  man  in  his  place  whether  in 
a  dugout  or  on  the  death  watch — and  let  the  Ger- 
mans come ! 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING        313 

Our  Forty-second  had  taken  its  resolution.  It  was 
going  to  stick.  It  must,  being  the  Forty-second.  The 
men  had  reasoned  out  the  situation,  too.  If  they  fell 
back,  why  it  would  be  just  as  bad  to  be  taken  from 
behind  by  machine  guns  and  shells  as  it  would  be  to 
face  them.  This  was  a  "  dig-in  "  affair;  and  they  dug 
hard  and  strengthened  their  parapets.  It  should 
never  be  said  that  the  Rainbow  Division  had  been 
routed.  The  dramatic  element  of  time  suspense, 
which  men  know  before  they  go  over  the  top,  was 
in  this  instance  that  of  waiting  for  the  bomb  that 
was  sizzling  at  your  feet  to  burst. 

The  German  artillery  preparation  was  thorough 
and  deep.  Every  village  in  the  back  area,  every 
cross  roads  and  every  road  leading  to  the  front  were 
shelled.  The  Germans  had  not  been  gathering  am- 
munition for  weeks  and  working  out  their  elaborate 
plans  of  attack  with  a  view  of  neglecting  any  pos- 
sible detail  of  destruction  and  interdiction.  They 
were  particularly  prodigal  with  heavy  shells  which 
break  in  trench  walls  and  dugouts.  Paths  and  woods 
as  well  as  battery  positions  were  saturated  with  gas. 
German  aeroplanes  swept  low,  dropping  bombs  and 
raking  roads  with  machine-gun  fire.  The  orbit  of 
every  man's  mind  under  this  terrific  shower  of  pro- 
jectiles carried  the  one  thought  of  doing  what  he  was 
told  until  he  was  hit. 

German  confidence  was  set  against  our  resolution. 
The  Germans  thought  of  themselves  as  the  irresist- 
ible movement.  We  thought  of  ourselves  as  the  im- 
movable object.  What  the  Germans  had  done  they 
had  good  reason  to  think  that  they  would  do  again. 
They  mustl     There   were   their  orders   and  their 


314  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

marching  schedule  after  their  break  through,  which 
required  them  to  be  in  Epernay  and  Chalons  at 
given  hours. 

Only  they  did  not  know  the  difference  between 
May  27th  and  July  15th.  This  time  the  Allies  were 
ready  for  them;  the  enemy  did  not  have  the  "  jump  " 
on  us.  We  answered  German  artillery  blasts  with 
our  artillery  blasts.  Our  75's  were  drumming  out 
barrages  into  their  advancing  infantry.  Our  155's 
were  pounding  their  batteries,  their  roads,  their  sup- 
ports. The  hell  on  the  morning  of  July  15th  raged 
more  fiercely  than  that  of  May  27th,  because  it  was 
not  one-sided.  The  Germans,  filled  with  the  idea  of 
their  invincibility,  were  repulsed  only  to  come  on 
again  and  again.  Following  their  elastic  system,  the 
French  fell  back  in  places;  and  we,  in  our  inter- 
mediate position,  became  no  longer  intermediate. 
One  of  our  battalions  broke  six  successive  counter- 
attacks with  steady  rifle  and  machine-gun  fire.  Other 
companies  were  sent  forward  to  assist  those  already 
engaged  until  we  had  five  and  a  half  companies 
where  no  brave  man  could  be  spared.  Two  of 
our  companies  and  two  French  companies  went 
over  the  top  together  against  the  Germans,  driv- 
ing them  back  on  their  reserves  and  scotching 
their  initiative.  Our  guns  had  the  satisfaction 
of  firing  pointblank  at  another  time  into  the 
German  infantry  and  artillery.  The  only  point 
where  the  enemy  ever  penetrated  our  positions  was 
in  some  woods  into  which  he  filtered  his  machine- 
gun  units,  but  he  did  not  reach  our  second  line. 
When  we  had  looked  after  other  more  pressing 
affairs  we  turned  the   attention   of  our   guns   and 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING       315 

machine  guns  to  this  quarter  with  the  desired 
results. 

What  news  I  The  Germans  had  been  stopped  in 
Champagne;  and  the  Forty-second  had  helped  the 
French  in  the  achievement.  Throughout  the  whole 
business,  so  far  as  I  could  learn,  there  was  no  flinch- 
ing on  the  part  of  our  men.  Wounded  artillerymen 
in  their  gas  masks  continued  serving  their  guns;  in- 
fantrymen, knocked  down  and  bruised  by  shells, 
picked  up  their  rifles  again  and  continued  firing. 
The  busy  ambulances  went  and  came  from  their 
stations  mindless  of  shell  fire.  Everybody  seemed  to 
have  done  his  part  in  that  grimmest  and  most  trying 
of  all  battle  experiences,  in  making  a  wall  of  human 
flesh  and  will  against  waves  of  an  attacking  infantry 
supported  by  all  the  storms  of  death  that  modern 
projectiles  can  offer. 

The  Forty-second  had  been  on  the  left  flank  of 
the  German  attack.  Americans  were  also  engaged 
on  the  right  on  the  Marne,  where  the  Germans  had 
maintained  their  lodgment  across  the  river  below 
Dormans.  The  outposts  facing  them  on  the  morning 
of  July  15th  in  that  wooded  and  hilly  region  were 
four  companies  of  the  Twenty-eighth  Division,  which 
had  had  as  yet  no  battle  experience  except  that  of 
Phase  B  with  the  British.  German  artillery  prepa- 
ration was  no  less  thorough  here  than  it  was  to  the 
eastward.  Troops  in  the  outpost  position  of  the 
men  of  the  Twenty-eighth  who  were  under  French 
direction,  are  scarcely  expected  to  hold  under  the 
bombardment  which  precedes  the  advance  of  infantry 
in  a  great  offensive  effort.  They  were  only  a  hand- 
ful, but  they  made  a  fight  of  it.     They  used  their 


3i6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

rifles  as  best  they  could.  Buffeted  by  shells,  swept 
by  enfilade  machine-gun  fire,  some  of  them  awaited 
their  fate  as  they  kept  on  firing;  others,  surrounded, 
cut  their  way  out  and  took  their  wounded  pickaback 
to  prevent  them  from  falling  into  German  hands; 
others  were  left  on  the  field  wounded  and  dead;  and 
a  few  were  taken  prisoners.  They  were  not  strong 
enough  to  stop  the  waves  of  Germans  in  their  per- 
sistent advance;  but  their  tenacity  slackened  and 
weakened  the  attack  as  a  terrier  dog  may  harass 
and  delay  a  bull  in  a  charge.  Nothing  more  dra- 
matic had  happened  in  the  annals  of  the  A.  E.  F. 
thus  far  than  the  experience  of  these  four  companies. 

The  nature  of  what  they  had  passed  through  was 
written  on  the  faces  of  the  survivors.  When  they 
fell  back  on  the  other  units  of  the  Twenty-eighth — 
which  were  waiting  in  the  sector  in  support  of  the 
French  under  continuous  shell  fire  to  meet  an  emer- 
gency which  never  occurred — they  brought  no  tales 
of  an  irresistible  enemy,  but  one  of  confidence  in 
themselves  as  soldier  to  soldier  against  the  German 
now  that  they  had  met  him.  Their  conduct  in- 
spirited the  Twenty-eighth  Division  with  the  desire 
to  meet  the  enemy  on  equal  terms  and  pay  him  back 
in  kind.  One  survivor  standing  erect  with  spatters 
of  blood  on  his  blouse,  which  had  been  ripped  by  a 
shell  fragment,  while  his  helmet  had  been  dented  by 
another  fragment,  said : 

"  There  wasn't  anybody  left  alive  around  me.  I 
looked  to  the  right  and  there  were  Germans;  and 
to  the  left,  and  there  were  Germans.  They  had 
been  slipping  up  through  the  woods  and  gullies. 
Well,  I  crawled  back  through  a  wheat  field  to  a  farm- 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING       317 

house.  There  was  a  woods  back  of  that  which 
made  my  getaway  sure.  Nobody  was  at  home. 
Dawn  was  just  breaking,  and  I  went  upstairs  and 
looked  out  of  the  window  and  I  saw  some  Germans 
working  their  way  across  the  field  in  their  green 
sunbonnet  helmets.  I  had  a  shot  at  them.  Then  I 
waited  for  them  to  get  up  after  they  dropped  to 
cover.  And  I  got  another  shot.  Well,  I  finished 
up  my  ammunition  before  I  beat  it,  and  they  began 
shelling  the  farmhouse  before  I  left.  I  guess  they 
must  have  taken  me  for  a  platoon." 

However,  it  is  the  Third  Division,  whose  motor- 
ized machine-gun  battalion  had  arrived  in  the  nick 
of  time  to  hold  the  bridge  at  Chateau-Thierry  in  the 
May  offensive,  which  had  the  most  to  do  with  for- 
ever associating  the  river  Marne  with  the  history  of 
our  army.  I  may  mention  again  how  the  Third  had 
been  hurried  to  the  Marne  without  its  artillery,  after 
it  was  under  orders  to  go  into  a  quiet  sector  for  its 
first  tour  in  the  trenches;  how  brief  had  been  its 
period  of  training  in  France.  Now  its  units,  which 
had  been  interspersed  with  the  French  to  meet  im- 
mediate demands  early  in  June,  and  also  the  regi- 
ments which  had  been  sent  across  the  river  where 
we  held  both  banks  west  of  Chateau-Thierry,  had 
been  returned  to  the  fold,  and  General  Dickman  had 
his  division  intact  under  his  own  command.  Mean- 
while, It  had  had  an  experience,  which  no  service  in 
an  average  trench  sector  could  approximate,  in  all 
kinds  of  mobile  work  which  developed  responsibility 
and  adaptability  in  the  officers  and  submitted  the 
men  to  a  variety  of  tests  which  made  them  war-wise. 

Some  strangers  had  just  joined  the  division.    The 


3i8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

welcome  which  these  newcomers  in  khaki  and  "  tin 
hats,"  on  jogging  caissons  and  gun  carriages,  re- 
ceived was  that  due  to  long-lost  brothers.  They  were 
strangers  in  the  sense  that  this  was  the  first  time 
that  they  had  been  with  their  division.  The  artil- 
lery of  the  veteran  First,  Second,  Twenty-sixth  and 
Forty-second  which  had  learned  team  play  through 
months  of  progressive  education,  were  living  integral 
parts  of  divisional  organisms.  Fresh  from  its  train- 
ing ground,  the  artillery  of  the  Third  which  had 
not  yet  fired  any  shots  in  anger,  was  called  to  sup- 
port the  infantry  of  the  Third  against  the  German 
offensive  under  peculiarly  difficult  tactical  conditions. 
As  a  unit  of  the  Third  how  could  its  artillery  expect 
anything  else !  The  Third  was  preeminently  the  di- 
vision that  was  sent  into  action  instead  of  the  class- 
room to  complete  its  education.  It  was  self-educated 
in  the  school  of  battle.  It  learned  how  to  fight  by 
fighting,  which  it  did  very  successfully,  not  in  con- 
tradiction of  the  value  of  education,  but  in  proof 
of  how  thorough  had  been  the  groundwork  of  our 
training-camp  system. 

The  last  battery  of  the  Third's  artillery  to  arrive 
was  on  the  road  just  as  the  preparatory  bombard- 
ment for  the  offensive  was  beginning.  One  of  its 
guns  was  damaged  by  a  shell  before  it  could  go 
into  action.  To  have  their  piece  put  out  of  com- 
mission when  they  were  about  to  use  it  for  the  first 
time  on  anything  except  practice  targets,  and  this  at 
the  outset  of  a  critical  battle,  was  about  as  hard  luck 
as  could  possibly  happen  to  any  gunners  after  months 
of  training.  It  made  the  other  gunners  feel  that 
they  already  had  a  personal  score  to  settle  with  the 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING        319 

German.  Even  if  they  were  strangers,  they  felt 
perfectly  at  home.  They  had  their  maps,  and  they 
only  needed  local  instructions  as  to  the  points  where 
they  were  to  drop  the  shells,  artillery  fire  being 
standardized  and  scientific.  Besides,  as  novices,  they 
had  the  advantage  of  receiving  the  more  praise  and 
a  warmer  welcome  due  to  the  acute  demand  for 
their  presence.  Two  days  later  the  artillery  of  the 
Third  was  veteran  and  accepted  into  full  and  affec- 
tionate membership  by  all  hands. 

Our  outposts  on  July  14th  covered  the  river  banks 
in  the  neighborhood  of  the  village  of  Mezy.  In  the 
adventurous  business  of  sending  patrols  across  the 
river  at  night  in  the  preceding  weeks,  our  men  had 
had  experiences  much  to  the  taste  of  adventurous 
young  lieutenants  and  young  soldiers.  Crossings 
were  prevented  by  enemy  machine-gun  fire  on  some 
occasions;  again  the  scouts  went  some  distance  be- 
yond the  other  bank,  both  without  finding  any  Ger- 
mans and  with  sharp  personal  encounters  in  the  dark 
which  yielded  prisoners  and  information. 

The  Marne  is  not  more  than  fifty  yards  across 
above  Chateau-Thierry  and  the  current  is  not  rapid. 
Hills  on  both  sides  form  the  valley  walls  which  slope 
down  irregularly  to  the  narrow  stretches  of  alluvial 
bottoms.  The  railroad  to  Epernay  follows  the 
river's  course.  There  is  a  bend  in  the  river  at  Dor- 
mans,  along  the  south  bank  where  the  Germans 
made  their  first  crossing  and  one  that  amounts  to 
a  loop  around  the  south  bank  east  of  Mezy.  To  the 
west  of  Mezy  the  river  bears  sharply  south  in  a 
winding  course  which  gives  an  advantage  to  an  enemy 
who  would  effect  a  crossing  from  the  north  bank. 


320  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Naturally,  the  German  would  choose  for  his  cross- 
ing points  which  would  enable  him  to  pinch  any 
troops  we  had  in  the  bends  and  to  act  effectually  for 
flanking  purposes  in  cooperation  with  his  troops  al- 
ready established  on  the  south  bank  across  from  Dor- 
mans. 

The  crossing  In  force  must  require  particularly 
thorough  and  systematic  artillery  preparation;  and 
the  enemy's  plans  were  characteristically  elaborate 
and  characteristically  confident.  He  began  his  bom- 
bardment at  midnight.  He  was  prodigal  of  large 
calibers;  he  used  prodigious  quantities  of  gas  in 
certain  areas.  Within  ten  minutes  he  had  cut  most 
of  the  communications  with  division  headquarters; 
and  soon  all  units  were  dependent  upon  wireless 
signals  and  runners  for  sending  reports  and  orders. 

This  situation  was  not  peculiar  to  the  occasion; 
but  common  in  the  midst  of  resistance  to  a  great 
attack.  A  general  may  not  always  know  the  exact 
position  of  his  own  pieces,  let  alone  those  of  the 
enemy.  By  the  time  that  the  order  which  he  sends 
as  the  result  of  a  report  arrives  the  situation  may 
have  entirely  changed.  Accurate  observations  in 
the  darkness  lighted  by  flashes  from  the  shells  is 
difficult,  and  even  when  gained  the  runner  who  car- 
ries the  message  and  the  runner  who  follows  with  it 
in  duplicate  may  be  killed.  Runners  in  gas  masks 
cannot  usually  find  their  way  through  gas  saturated 
woods;  and  if  they  take  off  their  masks  they  are 
gassed.  The  good  news  of  an  attack  repulsed  may 
not  have  reached  headquarters  before  another  attack 
has  broken  through. 

Therefore,  unit  commanders  must  act  upon  gen- 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING       321 

eral  instructions ;  and  as  the  smaller  the  unit  the  closer 
its  commander  is  to  the  enemy,  the  more  intimately 
and  murderously  difficult  his  problem.  He  in  turn  is 
dependent  upon  his  men.  He  can  impose  his  will 
upon  them  while  his  superiors  impose  their  will  upon 
him  only  to  a  certain  extent.  Discipline,  courage,  cool- 
ness, initiative  and  thoroughness  of  training  are  the 
final  factors  in  the  test  of  results.  Such  a  situation, 
one  may  repeat,  is  one  of  the  objects  of  thorough 
artillery  preparation  which  aims  at  the  same  time 
that  it  produces  confusion  in  control,  to  kill  all  rifle 
and  machine-gun  fire  in  front.  Orders,  it  is  well  to 
bear  in  mind,  were  to  hold  our  positions  of  resistance 
at  any  cost.    We  shall  see  what  happened. 

The  railroad  which  follows  the  course  of  the  river 
passes  through  Mezy  at  a  distance  of  from  seventy- 
five  to  six  hundred  yards  from  the  river.  Our  patrols 
covered  the  river  bank  at  night  and  were  withdrawn 
at  dawn  to  their  day  positions.  The  Surmelin  river 
empties  into  the  Marne,  where  it  curves  sharply  in- 
ward, to  the  east  of  Mezy;  and  the  Le  Rocq  plateau, 
commanding  the  valley  of  the  Surmelin,  was  the 
objective  of  the  German  attack.  If  he  gained  con- 
trol of  the  valley  the  way  was  open  for  him  to 
Montmirail  and  to  the  Montmirail-Meaux-Paris 
main  highway. 

The  regiment  which  held  this  Mezy-Surmelin 
sector  was  to  immortalize  itself  by  a  classic  example 
of  coolness,  courage  and  tenacity.  Its  skill  and  care 
in  the  disposition  of  its  forces  in  conjunction  with 
the  machine  guns,  in  anticipation  of  the  attack,  made 
its  remarkable  defense  possible.  The  bombardment 
which  began  at  midnight  was,  of  course,  particu- 


322  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

larly  concentrated  upon  the  forward  positions. 
After  three  hours  of  barrage  the  Germans  covered 
the  river  with  a  thick  smoke  screen  as  a  cover  for 
their  crossing. 

Already,  our  artillery  had  interfered  with  Ger- 
man plans.  It  had  concentrated  on  the  valleys  and 
ravines  which  the  Germans  would  probably  use  to 
approach  the  river  from  the  north  bank.  This,  of 
course,  was  the  obvious  thing  to  do.  The  point  is 
that  the  results  were  singularly  effective.  Units 
marching  in  close  order,  and  units  assembled,  await- 
ing the  word  to  march,  were  caught  in  a  furious 
storm  which  cut  holes  in  the  boats  they  were  carry- 
ing and  caused  many  casualties.  A  prisoner,  who 
told  of  this  interference  with  the  schedule,  said  that 
it  was  a  tragic  surprise  for  the  German  troops  who 
had  been  assured  that  they  would  cross  the  Marne 
with  little  opposition.  Other  shells  burst  in  boats 
already  afloat  and  left  their  passengers  who  were 
not  killed  to  swim  ashore.  This  reduction  of  the 
enemy's  numbers  was  most  fortunate  as  the  Third 
Division  had  quite  enough  to  do  in  dealing  with  the 
Germans  who  effected  a  crossing. 

Our  men  realized  the  meaning  of  the  smoke  screen 
and  also  the  intensified  bombardment  of  their  posi- 
tions, which  accompanied  it  with  a  view  to  keeping 
them  to  the  cover  of  their  rifle  pits.  They  were  too 
keen  on  getting  a  chance  at  a  target  not  to  expose 
themselves  in  the  midst  of  the  bursting  shells.  The 
place  to  stop  the  Germans  was  on  the  river.  They 
were  tacticians  enough  to  appreciate  this;  and 
the  preoccupation  of  the  marksman  possessed  them. 
The  smoke  screen  was  thin  enough  in  places  to  re- 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING       323 

veal  masses  of  the  crossing  parties  on  the  surface  of 
the  Marne.  In  the  bend  of  the  Marne  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Surmelin  not  a  German  was  able  to  land. 
Packed  together,  twenty  men  to  a  boat,  the  results  at 
close  range  can  be  imagined.  Boats  capsized  as  dead 
and  wounded  men  dropped  over  the  gunwales,  and 
survivors  jumped  overboard  to  save  their  lives  into 
the  water  which  was  whipped  by  rifle  and  machine- 
gun  fire. 

It  is  estimated  that  In  all  twenty  boats  were  sunk 
or  sent  drifting  harmlessly  down  the  stream;  and 
all  this  because  men  who  had  been  taught  how  to 
shoot,  as  General  Pershing  had  insisted,  had  such 
confidence  in  their  rifles  that  they  exposed  them- 
selves contrary  to  German  expectations.  If  they 
had  not,  their  losses  would  have  been  the  greater. 
According  to  the  German  notions,  they  ought  to  have 
hugged  their  rifle  pits  and  surrendered  when  superior 
numbers,  supported  by  the  rolling  barrage  which  was 
to  precede  the  Germans  after  they  had  landed, 
charged  them.  By  the  time  the  barrage  came,  as 
our  men  had  no  charge  to  repel,  they  could  take 
cover.  The  liaison  of  the  Tenth  and  Thirty-sixth 
German  divisions  was  the  road  running  along  the 
Surmelin  river  to  the  Surmelin  valley;  and,  thus, 
this  episode  had  broken  the  flanks  of  two  divisions 
and  their  liaison. 

Of  course,  other  boat  loads  were  crossing  at  the 
same  time  up  and  down  the  river;  and  the  Germans 
were  also  building  a  light  floating  bridge  from  which 
our  marksmen  tumbled  numbers  into  the  water.  Just 
to  the  east  of  Mezy,  where  the  bend  of  the  Marne 
makes  the  distance  from  the  river  to  the  railroad 


324  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

track  greater  than  at  the  mouth  of  the  Surmelin, 
one  of  our  platoons  in  the  midst  of  shell  fire  and 
machine-gun  fire  fought  to  the  death  to  prevent 
the  landing.  The  6th  German  Grenadiers,  once 
they  were  on  shore,  charged  toward  the  railroad 
track  past  Mezy.  They  met  the  second  platoon  on 
the  railroad  track,  whose  steel  rails  were  the  this-far- 
and-no-farther  line  of  our  resistance.  There  are  no 
German  graves  on  the  south  side  of  the  railroad  em- 
bankment. All  there  are  American.  There  are 
many  German  graves  in  the  north  side,  and  scat- 
tered thick  about  the  fields. 

The  platoon  on  the  railroad  track,  under  shell, 
machine-gun  and  minenwerfer  fire,  shot  into  the 
German  masses,  and  then,  the  survivors  welcomed 
close  quarters  which  meant  an  end  of  everything  but 
personal  combat.  It  was  bayonet  and  grenade,  man 
to  man,  or,  rather,  one  American  against  two  or 
three  Germans.  The  Americans  were  not  going  to 
yield  that  track  alive;  there  is  the  simple  fact  of  it. 

A  third  platoon  came  to  their  assistance  at  a  criti- 
cal moment  when  those  who  were  alive  must  soon 
succumb.  The  reenforcements  took  up  the  fight 
over  the  bodies  of  the  dead  while  the  wounded  who 
could  use  a  rifle  or  a  grenade  continued  in  action. 
The  men  of  the  second  platoon,  the  report  tells  us, 
were  all  killed  except  three  who  were  wounded;  and 
half  of  those  of  the  third  were  down  before  they  had 
driven  the  Germans  off  the  embankment.  A  fourth 
platoon  then  appeared,  prepared  to  counter-attack. 
Upon  its  advance  the  Germans,  who  had  fought 
out  all  their  courage,  may  well  have  concluded 
that  there   was   no   limit   to   American   reenforce- 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING        325 

ments  or  audacity,  and  they  threw  up  their  hands 
and  cried  "  Kamerad !  "  There  they  were  with 
the  river  at  their  back;  and  they  knew  by  this  time 
that  their  line  on  their  left  did  not  exist.  The 
Germans  who  were  to  form  their  flank  had  never 
been  able  to  land.  Instead,  our  company  on  our 
right  of  the  frontal  attack,  which  had  prevented  a 
crossing  on  its  front,  was  now  giving  those  who  had 
crossed  and  charged  the  embankment  a  withering 
cross  fire.  We  actually  took  over  four  hundred 
prisoners  between  the  railroad  and  the  river,  or 
nearly  the  equivalent  of  the  total  number  of  our 
two  companies  who  gathered  them  in.  In  fact,  the 
6th  German  Grenadiers  regiment  was  annihilated. 
There  could  be  no  better  illustration  of  what  courage 
and  the  offensive  spirit  will  accomplish  against  Ger- 
man first-line  troops.  As  for  our  men  in  the  village  of 
Mezy,  they  were  of  the  same  mettle.  The  Germans 
entered  the  village  but  could  not  budge  us.  Our  men 
there  were  firing  at  the  Germans  in  three  directions 
at  one  time,  without  considering  that  retreat  was  in 
order;  and  they  assisted  in  the  annihilation  of  the 
6th  German  Grenadiers. 

Meanwhile  this  little  battle  had  been  proceeding 
in  an  area  which  the  Germans  were  gradually  sur- 
rounding by  their  infiltrating  tactics.  Where  the 
Marne  bends  southward,  west  of  Mezy,  the  Germans 
had  effected  their  landing  on  a  line  to  the  rear  of  the 
railroad  track  which  we  were  stubbornly  holding. 
They  swung  in  to  the  support  of  their  broken  line 
from  Mezy  past  the  mouth  of  the  Surmelin.  At 
the  same  time  other  Germans  were  swinging  in  from 
the  east,  where  the  troops  in  that  sector  had  with- 


326  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

drawn.  The  colonel  of  our  regiment,  which  held 
the  Surmelin  valley  entrance,  had  foreseen  this,  and 
he  had  dug  trenches  on  his  right  flank  and  kept  a 
company  in  battle  formation  every  night  to  cover 
it,  which  was  fortunate  prevision.  The  Germans 
of  the  5th  Grenadier  Regiment  and  the  147th 
Infantry,  pressing  forward  in  this  direction,  met 
the  raking  rifle  fire  and  machine-gun  fire  from 
the  trench  which  shattered  their  charge.  Then 
our  company  counter-attacked  the  remnants  and 
drove  them  back  to  Varennes  road,  thus  disposing  of 
their  interference.  On  the  other  flank,  the  Germans 
reached  Fossoy  two  miles  to  the  southeast  of  Mezy. 
Immediately,  the  captain  of  the  company,  which  had 
suffered  such  severe  casualties  on  the  railroad  track, 
saw  their  deployment,  he  gathered  the  company 
cooks,  the  company  clerk,  his  orderly  and  runners 
and  other  troops  to  the  number  of  forty-two  all  told 
and  helped  beat  off  the  attack. 

Do  you  want  any  further  explanation  of  why  the 
Germans  never  reached  the  Surmelin  valley?  Or, 
why  the  German  command  never  saw  the  signals  it 
awaited  announcing  that  its  troops  were  well  on 
their  way  to  Montmirail  by  noon  of  July  15th  in 
keeping  with  their  schedule? 

Colonel  McAlexander  of  the  38th  Infantry 
Regiment  had  orders  to  hold  his  positions,  and  he 
held  his  positions.  If  his  men  had  broken  they 
would  have  been  surrounded  and  our  whole  sys- 
tem of  defense  would  have  been  threatened. 
The  marvel  of  the  accomplishment  of  our  38th 
Regiment  can  be  appreciated  only  by  one  who  realizes 
the  difliculty  of  securing  information  about  what  is 


RESOLUTE  STONEWALLING        327 

happening  in  the  thick  of  battle  and  making  your 
disposition  fit  emergencies.  We  acted  upon  the  prin- 
ciple that  if  the  Germans  had  us  in  flank  we  also  had 
them  in  flank  when  we  faced  about  and  attacked 
them.  But  the  deciding  factor  was  the  unflinching 
courage  of  our  men  and  their  aggressive  spirit.  This 
action  is  worthy  of  attention  as  exhibiting  about  all 
the  requirements  in  officers  and  men  that  go  to  make 
military  efficiency.     It  is  a  military  classic. 

Third  Division  headquarters  might  well  have  or- 
dered a  retreat  to  a  second  line  of  defense,  and  it 
might  have  received  compliments  for  a  skillful  with- 
drawal in  face  of  an  overpowering  attack;  but  it 
was  confident  that  our  artillery  had  worked  havoc 
upon  the  enemy  s  bridges,  boats  and  landing  parties. 
It  had  faith  in  that  regiment  at  the  mouth  of  the 
valley  and  it  had  messages  brought  by  runners 
through  barrages  that  proved  that  its  faith  was  well 
grounded. 

I  quote  one  written  at  7:  25  by  the  captain  of  a 
machine-gun  company.  There  is  no  sign  of  stampede 
in  face  of  the  German  army  in  his  report.  He  was 
fighting  as  he  was  expected  to  fight  and  writing 
the  kind  of  message,  which  by  the  criterion  of 
his  training,  he  was  expected  to  write  in  a  desperate 
situation.  He  starts  out  by  saying  that  "  the  situa- 
tion up  here  is  improving;  the  infantry  is  still  hold- 
ing the  line  of  the  railroad,"  although  "  our  right " 
has  been  "  left  in  the  air,"  and  then  continues: 

"  Have  sent  three  guns  on  top  of  hill  from  spare 
guns.  Captain  Butler  has  sent  four  guns  over. 
Understand  infantry  supports  are  going  up  to  them. 
Men   are  doing  fine.     Have  not  heard   from  Lt. 


328  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Barber  and  his  two  forward  guns.  It  is  reported 
that  he  is  captured.  Rest  of  guns  still  fighting.  The 
two  forward  guns  at  the  bridge  doing  deadly  work. 
Lt.  McGuffen  killed  and  Lt.  Russell  badly  wounded. 
Captain  Berri  and  Lt.  Milligan  of  Co.  C  were 
killed.  Have  had  about  ten  casualties  among  men. 
Captain  Butler  had  two  guns  knocked  out.  Will 
advise  you  again  as  situation  clears." 

We  were  prepared  for  the  method  of  German  at- 
tack. At  every  point  we  had  met  his  shrewd  infiltra- 
tion tactics  with  the  proper  response  of  accurate 
shooting  and  seizing  the  advantage  of  closing  in  on 
his  advancing  units  as  they  moved  forward.  Other 
units  of  the  division,  which  had  not  the  dramatic 
opportunity  of  the  38th  Regime  it,  carried  out 
headquarters'  plans  by  facing  the  enemy  in  clever 
tactical  maneuvers,  and  with  cries  of  "  Let  them 
come !  "  held  their  ground.  It  was  gratifying 
to  know  that  America  had  done  her  part  in  con- 
junction with  the  French,  the  British  and  the  Italian 
forces  which  were  engaged  on  July  15th;  and  the 
report  of  our  taking  over  six  hundred  prisoners  from 
the  German  attacking  forces  as  we  beat  them  back 
was  not  the  least  pleasant  item  of  the  communique 
which  brought  to  an  apprehensive  world  the  word 
that  the  fifth  German  offensive  was  repulsed. 


XXVI 


WE  STRIKE  BACK 

A  defensive  that  had  lasted  four  months — All  hopes  centered  on 
arriving  American  divisions — General  Pershing  insists  that  it 
is  time  to  prick  the  German  bubble — His  plan — Where  we 
smashed  the  cup  of  victory  in  the  German's  face — Our  First 
Division  is  ordered  to  advance  five  miles  the  first  day,  and 
to  keep  going — The  Second  Division  arrives  after  short  notice 
but  on  time — Marshaling  the  attacking  troops  in  a  rainy 
forest  at  night — Lost  in  the  forest  with  danger  of  being  late 
for  the  attack — Some  units  which  had  to  go  over  the  top  out 
of  breath  from  the  rush  to  arrive  in  time. 

The  Allied  armies  on  the  Western  front  had  been 
almost  as  completely  on  the  defensive  for  four 
months  as  if  we  were  a  besieged  garrison.  In  spirit 
they  had  been  on  the  defensive  since  Cambrai  in  the 
previous  autumn.  They  had  made  some  sorties,  it  is 
true;  but  with  the  single  exception  of  the  counter- 
attack on  June  nth  against  the  German  offensive 
toward  Compiegne  they  had  made  no  extensive 
counter-attacks,  let  alone  initial  attacks.  Although 
time  was  to  justify  the  wisdom  of  allowing  the 
enemy  to  become  overconfident  and  to  overextend 
himself — when  the  failure  of  any  counter-offensive 
on  our  part  might  have  meant  the  loss  of  a  decisive 
action — the  effect  of  this  waiting  to  receive  blows, 
this  continual  apprehension  lest  the  next  blow  should 
succeed,  this  yielding  of  ground  as  the  tribute  paid 
for  temporary  security,  must  only  confirm  us  in  think- 

329 


330  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ing  in  terms  of  the  defensive  while  their  apparent 
successes  confirmed  the  Germans  in  thinliing  in  terms 
of  the  offensive. 

After  the  fourth  offensive,  which  brought  the 
enemy  within  forty  miles  of  Paris,  you  might  hear 
military  discussions  on  whether  or  not  Paris  should 
be  defended  in  the  event  of  another  German  drive 
bringing  it  under  the  German  guns.  The  prepara- 
tions which  the  military  authorities  of  Paris  had 
made  for  any  emergency  were  matters  of  common 
talk.  We  were  ready  to  move  our  own  army  offices 
from  Paris;  the  Red  Cross  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  had 
arranged  for  trucks  to  remove  their  workers.  Lay 
pessimists  saw  Paris  as  already  lost;  and  military 
pessimists  saw  its  military  defenses  as  impracticable 
directly  it  was  seriously  threatened.  All  hopes 
centered  on  the  arriving  American  divisions.  If  the 
Allies  could  stem  the  tide  until  August  ist,  then  we 
should  outnumber  the  enemy;  and  when  there  were 
enough  Americans  and  they  were  organized  we 
might  consider  an  offensive,  which  could  hardly  take 
place  before  spring.  Thus,  confidence  in  eventual  vic- 
tory rested  entirely  upon  the  Americans;  and  the 
spirft  of  initiative  in  our  men  was  reflected  in  counsel 
by  General  Pershing  in  a  manner  which  was  to  have 
an  important  influence  in  the  operations  that  were 
to  recover  the  offensive  for  the  Allies  in  a  single 
brilliant  stroke. 

There  could  be  no  firmer  advocate  of  thorough 
training  than  General  Pershing;  yet  no  soldier  ever 
believed  in  swift,  hard  aggressive  blows  more  in- 
domitably than  he.  He  is  not  a  man  of  halfway 
measures.    Later,  when  German  oflicers  said  that  our 


WE  STRIKE  BACK  331 

army  was  methodical  in  preparation  and  bold  in 
action,  it  was  merely  an  expression  of  simple,  im- 
mutable military  principles.  The  test  of  command 
is  in  their  application;  and,  primarily,  in  the  vision 
which  sees,  through  surrounding  detail,  of  when  and 
how  to  apply  them. 

Any  soldier  of  any  age  who  looked  at  the  German 
salient  after  the  Marne  offensive,  could  have  had 
only  one  thought,  and  that  was  a  drive  at  the  base 
of  the  salient  to  close  the  mouth  of  the  pocket.  Yet 
one  heard  talk  that  salients  no  longer  counted. 
Neither  reports  of  German  strength  nor  the  defen- 
sive spirit  of  the  time  diverted  General  Pershing's 
attention  from  that  inviting  bulge  in  the  German 
battle  line.  When  Premier  Clemenceau  and  General 
Foch  came  to  American  Headquarters  June  22nd 
for  a  conference,  he  again  pointed  to  its  obvious 
vulnerability,  and  vigorously  advocated  an  offensive. 
He  had  faith  that  the  German  strength  was  over- 
estimated; and  that  under  a  determined  attack  the 
salient  would  crack  like  an  egg  shell. 

But  where  were  the  troops  for  the  operation?  The 
events  of  the  four  years  of  war,  which  had  placed 
such  heavy  responsibilities  upon  the  French  army, 
had  made  the  French  thrifty  of  their  man-power. 
Although  no  sufficient  strategic  reserve  for  a  counter- 
offensive  existed,  General  Pershing  suggested  that 
there  were  divisions  in  rest  which  could  be  mobilized. 
Our  untrained  divisions  could  release  other  French 
divisions  from  quiet  sectors.  Our  older  divisions 
had  already  proved  their  mettle.  We  had  others 
which  might  not  be  fully  trained,  but  they  would 
fight.    They  knew  how  to  shoot;  they  had  initiative. 


332  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Behind  them  were  still  other  American  divisions 
rapidly  training  and  others  arriving  from  America. 
The  time  had  come  to  prick  the  bubble  of  the  Marne 
salient.  It  was  only  a  bubble,  though  it  was  German. 
Let  the  veteran  French  army  attack  with  its  old  elan 
and  the  young  American  army  attack  by  its  side  with 
the  energy  of  its  youth,  and  we  should  force  the  Ger- 
mans to  dance  to  our  tune  instead  of  our  dancing  to 
their  tune. 

The  result  of  the  German  offensive  of  July  15  th 
justified  the  General's  premises  and  conclusions  both 
in  the  repulse  of  the  enemy  and  in  the  way  which  the 
Third  and  Fourth  divisions  and  the  French  and 
British  divisions  had  fought.  All  the  Germans  had 
gained  was  to  deepen  their  pocket.  They  had  put 
the  point  of  their  salient  over  a  river  in  a  bloody 
and  unsuccessful  effort.  They  were  in  reaction  as 
the  result  of  their  failure;  we  were  in  reaction 
from  our  depression.  It  was  the  turning-point  of 
psychology.  Immediate  advantage  must  be  taken 
of  the  opportunity.  The  Germans  had  started  a  war 
of  movement;  we  accepted  the  challenge  at  the  mo- 
ment that  they  were  trembling  and  confused  from 
the  failure  of  their  own  initiative.  We  should  not 
take  the  time  for  elaborate  preparations  which  would 
reveal  our  point  of  attack;  we  should  go  in  with  the 
rush  of  Manoury's  men  in  September,  19 14,  and 
along  many  of  the  same  roads  where  he  had  struck 
von  Kluck  in  flank. 

How  far  away  Manoury  and  von  Kluck  seem! 
How  long  it  seems  since  I  saw  the  French  and  the 
German  dead  in  the  Bois  de  Retz,  where  now  our 
men  were  to  go  over  the  top;  how  long  since  I 


WE  STRIKE  BACK  333 

went  along  that  Paris-Soissons  road  to  my  first  real 
view  of  the  French  army  in  action,  where  now  Ameri- 
can guards  were  to  bring  back  long  columns  of 
German  prisoners!  With  this  Paris-Soissons  road 
I  associate  the  most  exhilarating  scenes  of  the  war 
— the  scenes  of  the  repulse  and  the  pursuit  of  the 
enemv  in  his  two  great  efforts  to  win  a  decision  in 
the  West.  There,  on  July  i8th,  we  did  not  dash 
the  cup  of  victory  from  his  lips — we  smashed  it  into 
splinters  in  his  face. 

General  Foch  who  gave  the  word  for  the  attack; 
and  General  Petain  who  worked  out  the  plans,  both 
took  General  Pershing  at  his  word.  The  Americans 
were  to  show  how  we  could  fight,  with  our  two 
veteran  divisions  beside  French  divisions  in  the  place 
of  honor  in  the  drive  against  the  base  of  the  salient 
toward  Soissons.  Surprise  was  essential;  and  this  is 
best  accomplished  by  rapidity  of  movement  before 
the  enemy's  espionage  service  can  communicate  its 
information. 

The  First  Division  had  been  relieved  from  Can- 
tigny  on  July  8th.  After  two  months  in  the  Mont- 
didier  sector  it  had  a  few  days'  rest  in  billets  in 
the  Beauvais  neighborhood  and  again  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Dammartin  on  the  way  toward  the 
Marne  salient;  and  had  received  orders  on  July  15th 
to  proceed  to  the  Soissons  sector  under  the  Tenth 
French  army — a  movement  that  might  have  been 
only  incidental  to  a  stabilized  battle  line.  On  July 
1 6th,  the  First  reported  to  relieve  one  brigade  of 
the  Moroccan  Division  in  front  of  Couevres.  That 
night  it  scouted  its  positions.  On  the  night  of  the 
17th  it  went  into  line.    It  had  moved  rapidly,  but  not 


334  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

under  the  pressure  of  sufficient  haste  to  worry  or 
excite  anyone  in  this  methodical  division,  which  is 
never  sensational  even  if  it  has  the  opportunity  to 
be  sensational.  Its  guns  were  up;  everything  was 
up.    The  First  was  ready. 

When  that  veteran  staff  had  the  information  that 
their  objective  on  their  first  day  would  take  them 
some  five  miles  and  that  they  were  to  keep  right  on 
going  the  second  day  and  the  third — well,  this  was 
what  the  First  had  been  looking  forward  to  for  one 
year,  two  weeks  and  two  days,  or  ever  since  it  had 
arrived  in  France.  Major  General  BuUard  wished 
that  he  had  not  been  promoted  to  command  a  corps 
until,  at  least,  July  19th.  His  successor.  Major 
General  Charles  P.  Summerall,  who  had  commanded 
the  artillery  of  the  First,  was  a  lieutenant  after 
General  BuUard's  own  heart,  as  he  had  been  after 
the  heart  of  Captain  Reilly  on  the  march  to  Peking 
some  eighteen  years  ago.  Responsibihty  had  de- 
veloped character  rapidly  in  this  war;  and  General 
Summerall  is  Cromwellian  in  his  downrightness  and 
driving  initiative  and  his  devout,  crusader's  faith  in 
his  cause  and  his  men. 

All  officers  and  soldiers  who  had  been  trans- 
ferred to  other  divisions  as  instructors,  when  they 
heard  the  news,  felt  that  they  had  been  robbed  of 
the  supreme  emotion  of  their  lives.  This  was  the 
last  of  the  firsts  for  the  First;  it  was  simply  to 
fight  with  all  its  strength,  its  courage,  its  speed, 
applying  all  its  experience  and  all  it  had  learned  in 
school.  Nothing  new  could  happen  to  it  hereafter 
unless  it  should  be  the  first  division  to  return  home 
after  the  war.    As  you  may  have  observed,  all  who 


WE  STRIKE  BACK  335 

have  been  in  France  since  the  early  days  have  an 
affection  for  the  First,  in  the  name  of  all  that  it 
went  through,  including  drilling  with  the  feet  of 
some  of  the  men  done  up  in  sacking  for  want  of 
new  shoes,  in  the  blue  print  days  of  the  blue  print 
stage  of  the  S.  O.  S. 

On  the  right  of  the  First  was  the  famous  Moroc- 
can Division,  including  the  Foreign  Legion,  which 
in  brilliant  action  after  brilliant  action  has  written 
its  name  in  blood  which  has  turned  to  the  gold  of  an 
immortal  glory  in  the  annals  of  the  French  army. 
It  is  an  attack  division;  and  it  attacks  as  the  tiger 
attacks,  lithe  and  quick  and  cunning  and  fearless. 
Renewed  again  and  again,  officer  and  men  recruits 
who  take  the  place  of  the  fallen  seem  to  absorb 
their  spirit.  On  the  left  of  the  First  was  one  of 
the  best  of  the  regular  French  divisions. 

Our  Second  Division  (now  commanded  by  Major 
General  Harbord  in  place  of  Major  General  Bundy, 
who  had  been  given  a  corps  command)  was  to 
attack  on  the  right  of  the  Moroccans.  It  was  to 
be  precipitated  into  action  with  all  the  abruptness 
with  which  it  had  been  thrown  against  the  German 
offensive  on  June  ist.  After  its  exhaustion  and  its 
severe  casualties  in  a  month  of  continuous  fighting, 
which  included  the  taking  of  Vaux  and  Belleau 
Wood,  it  had  had  two  weeks  in  rest  at  Montrieul- 
aux-Lions,  recuperating  and  reorganizing  and  drill- 
ing the  replacements  who  had  come  to  fill  the  gaps 
made  by  its  dead  and  wounded  and  sick.  It  was 
not  yet  up  to  full  strength  when  the  order  came  on 
the  night  of  July  i6th  for  the  infantry  to  embuss 
and   for  all   horse-drawn  and  motor  transport  to 


336  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

proceed  overland  to  the  region  of  the  Bois  de  Retz. 
The  Second  had  "got  there"  once  in  a  hurry; 
and  it  was  given  another  task  in  keeping  with  its 
reputation.  It  did  not  know  just  what  was  ex- 
pected of  it;  but  French  officers  were  to  give  its 
commanders  further  orders  at  the  debussing  points. 
Owing  to  the  stress  of  a  rapid  concentration  and 
the  secrecy  involved,  the  infantry  units  had  tire- 
some and  exasperating  marching  and  counter- 
marching after  debussing. 

Not  until  4  P.M.  on  the  afternoon  of  July  17th, 
witTi  the  attack  set  for  5:35  on  the  morning  of 
the  1 8th,  were  the  plans  for  the  attack  drawn  up 
and  instructions  given  to  the  artillery  and  infantry 
commanders.  The  infantry  was  to  go  over  the 
top  from  the  line  through  the  eastern  portion  of 
the  Bois  de  Retz,  an  immense  thick  forest  which 
had  seen  fierce  work  during  the  battle  of  the  Marne. 
As  fast  as  detachments  arrived  they  were  to  be 
hurried  into  the  forest,  as  pronounced  movements  in 
the  open  must  be  avoided  by  daylight  in  order  to 
escape  aerial  observation.  When  night  came  all  the 
units  were  not  yet  assembled.  The  commanders 
must  take  them  through  the  forest  and  put  them 
in  position  before  the  zero  hour  for  this  most  im- 
portant and  critical  action.  There  are  few  roads 
in  the  forest.  They  were  a  rumbling  jam  of  pressing 
and  varied  transport,  with  the  guns  and  ammunition 
and  the  machine  guns  on  the  front  demanding  right 
of  way.  Rain  began  to  fall.  This  intensified  the 
darkness  of  the  woods  under  the  overhanging  tree 
tops.  Within  the  woods  a  man  was  not  visible  at 
a  distance  of  a  pace. 


WE  STRIKE  BACK  337 

Commanding  officers  had  to  scout  the  line  in  the 
midst  of  the  forest  in  this  inky,  drizzling  night. 
Having  marked  out  their  sectors,  they  had  to  put 
their  commands  in  position  in  order  that  their  front 
line  should  attack  in  proper  order  and  the  supports 
and  reserves  should  follow  in  theirs,  which  was  in 
suggestive  contrast  with  previous  experience  of  hav- 
ing one  night  for  reconnaissance  and  the  next  for 
**  going  over."  Non-commissioned  officers  were  sta- 
tioned along  the  routes  as  guides.  Troops  in  thread- 
ing their  way  past  and  around  that  weaving,  straining 
mass  of  transports  with  its  blocks,  stumbled  into 
sloughs,  bumped  into  wheels  and  mules  and  found 
themselves  off  the  road  colliding  with  trees.  It  was 
a  groping  blindman's-buff  kind  of  business.  Units 
were  cut  in  two  by  an  ammunition  caisson  or  an 
ambulance  broken  down  off  the  road.  The  portion 
that  was  ahead  went  on;  the  portion  that  was 
stopped  had  to  wait.  How  were  lieutenants  to  keep 
their  platoons  together,  or  captains  their  companies 
together,  let  alone  majors  keep  their  battalions  to- 
gether? How  were  they  to  follow  the  instructions 
of  the  non-commissioned  officer  guides  who  were 
themselves  confused? 

Regimental  commanders  at  their  stations  forward 
began  hearing  all  kinds  of  rumors  telling  how  their 
men  were  wandering  about  lost  in  the  woods  in  small 
groups  without  even  compass  direction.  At  four 
o'clock  the  battalions  which  were  to  lead  the  attack 
had  not  appeared.  Reports  said  that  they  were  too 
far  in  the  rear  ever  to  arrive  in  time.  The  French 
liaison  officers  and  those  commanding  the  thin  line  of 
exhausted  French  troops  who  were  to  be  relieved 


338  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

were  seriously  alarmed.  It  was  too  late  to  counter- 
mand the  order  for  the  attack.  There  was  danger 
of  the  line,  which  knew  what  opposition  it  might 
encounter  in  this  vital  effort,  having  a  fatal  gap 
which  would  compromise  the  whole  movement  and 
change  any  prospect  of  success  into  almost  certain 
failure — with  the  Second  Division  receiving  the 
blame. 

The  French  sent  out  all  their  runners  as  guides; 
regimental  commanders  themselves  as  well  as  aides 
rushed  back  to  hurry  our  men  forward.  They  dis- 
regarded the  identity  of  a  unit  or  its  order  of  battle 
in  their  vigorous  urging.  The  situation  was  none 
the  happier  because  we  had  to  go  through  a  stretch 
of  woods  in  the  first  lap  of  our  advance,  which  even 
with  the  most  careful  preparation,  when  platoon 
commanders  have  maps  and  have  scouted  the 
ground,  is  a  difficult  undertaking.  But  we  must 
"  get  there."     We  must  go  over  the  top. 

The  rush  to  catch  the  last  launch  out  to  the 
steamer  was  nothing  compared  to  the  hectic  rush  in 
that  dense  forest  and  dense  darkness  in  the  counted 
minutes  of  that  half-hour  whose  suspense  was  the 
more  harrowing,  considering  the  risk  of  an  under- 
taking in  which  everything  had  been  subordinated 
to  the  element  of  surprise.  We  had  planned  to  go 
the  German  one  better  in  open  warfare.  He  had 
always  preceded  his  offensives  by  artillery  prepara- 
tion, which  we  were  now  to  forego.  By  past  stand- 
ards of  elaborate  jumping-off  trenches,  arduous  as- 
sembling of  material,  deliberate  plans  of  infinite  de- 
tail, and  thorough  registering  of  guns  on  targets,  the 
attack  of  July  i8th  should  have  been  annihilated. 


WE  STRIKE  BACK  339 

But  this  kind  of  prevision  informed  the  enemy  of 
what  he  was  to  expect  and  where  he  was  to  expect  it. 
The  division  artillery  which  was  hurried  into  posi- 
tion was  not  to  send  over  a  single  shell  before  the 
infantry  advanced.  Gunners  were  shown  their  pro- 
gramme on  the  maps;  and  they  were  to  fire  by  the 
map  at  4:35.  And  the  men  of  the  Second  *' got 
there."  When  the  artillery  started  its  rolling  barr 
rage  wfth  a  crash  at  4:  35,  the  light  of  the  bursting 
shells  illumined  the  way  for  some  units  which  had 
come  up  on  the  run.  They  recovered  their  breath 
as  they  proceeded  "  over  the  top  "  in  the  more  delib- 
erate pace  of  the  advance. 

And  now?  Did  the  enemy  know  or  did  he  not 
know  that  we  were  coming?  He  must  have  realized 
that  the  logical  point  of  attack  against  his  salient  was 
toward  Soissons.  The  regimental  commanders  who 
had  started  their  troops  off  in  such  confusion  and 
haste  after  they  had  been  all  night  on  their  feet 
might  well  be  fearful  of  the  result;  and  the  feeling 
of  relief  when  these  commanders  found  that  their 
commands  were  keeping  up  with  the  commands  on 
their  flanks,  and  when  prisoners  began  to  appear  and 
our  walking  wounded  said  that  "  Everything  was 
going  fine,"  had  grateful  reference  to  providential 
dispensations  which  are  not  taken  into  account  by 
practical  soldiers. 


XXVII 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS 

Heroic  tanks — The  Germans  taken  completely  by  surprise — Cham- 
pions of  all  the  Allies — The  Frenchman  by  nature  an  of- 
fensive soldier — Friendly  rivalry  of  French  divisions  with 
American  divisions — An  attack  where  speed  was  everything — 
Our  first  captured  guns — A  battalion  caught  in  a  cave — 
"  Forward,  the  guns !  " — Wounded  and  prisoners — American 
chaflF  for  German  captives — Poor  specimens  of  the  German 
army — An  attack  that  startled  the  German  High  Command — 
When  night  came — Men  who  •wanted  to  go  on — The  hottest 
action  our  army  had  had  since  the  Civil  War — A  headquarters 
and  a  dressing  station  in  one  house — "  Where  did  you  get  it, 
Buddy?" — Polish  prisoners. 

The  brief  official  reports  and  the  map  with  broad 
blue  fines  showing  the  sectors  of  our  divisions'  ad- 
vance are  very  cold  and  official  compared  to  the 
vision  which  personal  glimpses  of  the  action  of 
July  1 8th  and  the  following  days  summon  of  the 
sweep  of  our  men  across  the  plateau  toward  Sois- 
sons.  Broken  by  ravines  and  by  villages  the  stretch 
of  the  plateau  was  comparatively  excellent  ground 
for  a  rapid  offensive  movement. 

When  the  sorely  hurried  Second  came  out  of  the 
wood,  it  found  that  it  was  up  with  the  divisions  on 
its  right  and  left.  The  whole  line  was  advancing 
without  any  interruption  by  the  relatively  light  re- 
sponse of  the  German  guns.  Our  own  rolling  bar- 
rage could  not  be  as  close  protection  as  usual;  for 
our  gunners  might  not  "  cut  it  too  fine  "  when  they 
had  had  no  registration.     Therefore,  the  Germans 

340 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS       341 

had  more  time,  between  the  passing  of  the  barrage 
and  the  arrival  of  our  infantry,  to  spring  out  of  their 
dugouts  and  pits  and  man  their  machine  guns.  With 
the  accompanying  tanks  nosing  about  to  look  after 
such  details,  our  early  progress  was  little  delayed 
by  machine-gun  nests  in  bushes  or  farmhouses.  It 
is  difficult  to  think  of  such  creaking,  racking,  un- 
gainly mechanisms  as  tanks  being  heroic;  but  they 
are  as  heroic  to  many  an  infantryman  as  any  knight 
in  armor  who  ever  came  to  the  aid  of  a  foot  soldier 
in  distress. 

At  the  end  of  the  first  hour  all  the  divisions  were 
on  the  blue  line  running  across  the  lines  of  advance 
which  was  the  first  objective.  Three  objectives  were^ 
set  for  the  first  day.  Others  would  doubtless  be  set 
for  the  next  day  if  these  were  taken.  The  great 
thing  to  the  men  was  that  they  were  not  to  stop 
here  and  dig  trenches  as  they  had  been  obliged  to  do 
in  the  Cantigny  offensive;  but  were  to  continue  ad- 
vancing until  casualties  called  a  halt. 

The  soldier  who  falls  from  the  splinter  of  a  stray 
shell  or  from  a  sniper's  bullet  in  mucky  trenches 
serves  his  country  equally  well  as  in  an  attack,  only 
there  is  no  evident  reward  for  his  sacrifice.  Who, 
if  he  must  risk  death,  would  not  prefer  to  risk  it 
in  a  charge  when  every  step  taken  means  the  reward 
of  ground  gained?  At  the  end  of  that  first  hour  our 
men  had  their  stride.  They  were  feeling  the  very 
joy,  the  very  exultation  of  battle,  and  a  confidence 
born  of  the  swiftness  of  their  advance. 

We  had  taken  the  Germans  completely  by  sur- 
prise. We  had  outwitted  the  German  Staff;  and 
every  French  and  American  soldier  with  their  quick 


342  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

intelligence  knew  that  we  had.  The  German 
trenches  were  scratches  in  the  earth  beside  the  strong 
defenses  on  the  Somme,  in  the  Ypres  salient,  or  in 
Champagne.  They  had  held  to  the  new  system  of 
open  warfare,  evidently  convinced  that  they  would 
be  soon  moving  on;  or  if  we  attacked,  that  machine- 
gun  nests  would  soon  stay  our  advance. 

Chips  before  a  tidal  wave,  the  Germans  in  the 
front  line  held  up  their  hands  in  blank  astonishment 
and  demoralization.  Troops  in  dugouts  in  the  sec- 
ond line  who  were  to  rally  in  support  in  the  elastic 
defensive  system  were  hardly  elastic  enough  on  this 
occasion.  They  were  asleep  when  the  earth  trem- 
bled and  the  crackling  reports  of  shells  broke  in  a 
storm  on  a  tranquil  summer's  morning.  On  other 
occasions,  German  soldiers  had  gone  to  their  posi- 
tions in  the  midst  of  a  bombardment  of  high  ex- 
plosives and  fired  through  the  rolling  barrage,  taking 
cover  when  the  barrage  arrived  and  rushing  out 
again  to  meet  the  infantry  advancing  behind  it.  But 
here  was  an  attack  without  any  previous  artillery 
preparation,  which  was  not  according  to  the  rules. 

"  I  guess  the  Hun  saw  we  meant  business  this 
time,"  as  one  of  our  soldiers  remarked.  We  had 
numbers,  and  supported  by  tanks,  we  moved  with  a 
systematic  ardor  of  purpose  which  must  have  ap- 
peared most  forbidding  to  an  enemy  who  put  his 
head  out  of  a  dugout  and  had  to  make  up  his  mind 
whether  he  would  be  taken  prisoner  or  die  in  his 
tracks.  It  is  easy  to  talk  about  dying  in  your  tracks, 
but  hardly  appealing  when  you  are  wakened  out  of 
a  sound  sleep  in  the  chill  morning  air  to  resist  guns 
and  infantry  which  are  perfectly  wide-awake. 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS       343 

All  impatience  from  the  months  of  stalling,  all 
the  misery  of  having  to  keep  on  the  defensive,  all 
the  longing  for  the  day  when  we  should  rush  our 
opponent  with  a  rain  of  blows  were  in  the  released 
spring  which  precipitated  us  into  the  attack.  Youth- 
ful skill  of  America  and  veteran  skill  of  France 
would  not  be  denied.  In  the  old  days,  opposing 
groups  of  primitive  combatants  used  to  choose 
champions  who  would  decide  the  issue  of  battle  in 
personal  combat.  The  First  and  Second  divisions 
and  the  French  divisions  with  whom  they  fought, 
were  in  something  the  same  way  the  champions  of 
all  the  divisions  of  the  Allies  from  Flanders  to  the 
Adriatic  and  of  every  man,  woman  and  child  of  the 
Allied  countries.  Accordingly  as  these  chosen  sol- 
diers fought  and  as  they  succeeded,  the  Allied  world 
would  feel  the  next  day. 

The  veteran  French  were  in  the  kind  of  action  for 
which  they  are  pecufiarly  fitted.  By  nature,  the 
Frenchman  is  an  offensive  soldier.  We  all  know  how 
uneasily  the  early  days  of  trench  warfare  sat  upon 
his  spirit.  He  had  to  accommodate  himself  to  it; 
and  amazed  the  world  by  his  fortitude.  Movement 
suits  his  nature.  He  is  fluid  and  quick  in  attack. 
There  is  mercury  in  him.  This  drive,  without  any 
previous  artillery  preparation  was  characteristic  of 
his  natural  daring  and  facility  in  swift  maneuver. 
He  was  doing  the  thing  which  was  in  his  character; 
his  old  confidence  in  himself  and  his  method  had 
returned. 

With  the  Americans  back  of  him  in  millions,  with 
the  Americans  fighting  at  his  side,  he  was  no  longer 
under  the  necessity  of  extreme  caution  in  safeguard- 


344  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ing  his  own  reserves;  he  had  a  bank  account  which 
permitted  the  hazard  which  he  loves  in  battle.  We 
brought  to  him  the  impulse  of  our  youth.  He  had 
heard  of  our  pantherish  rush,  our  "  punch  "  and 
our  "  pep  " ;  and  he  would  give  us  an  example  of 
French  elan.  In  the  second  Marne  offensive  the 
gleam  that  was  in  his  eye  in  the  first  Marne  offensive 
had  come  flashing  back.  Should  French  veterans 
allow  the  novices  from  America  to  outstrip  them 
in  thefr  own  peculiar  forte  ?  Should  our  vigor  in  i*s 
first  great  offensive  admit  that  it  could  not  keep  up 
with  any  army  on  earth?  Rivalry  of  French  divi- 
sions with  American  divisions  and  between  French 
divisfons  and  between  American  divisions  was  an- 
other spur  to  effort  in  the  well-conceived  plan  of 
the  drive  toward  Soissons,  which  was  to  be  as  bril- 
liant in  execution  as  in  conception. 

In  all  accounts  of  offensives  you  read  of  this  or 
that  unit  being  "  held  up  "  by  machine-gun  fire  from 
some  strong  point.  Until  this  is  cleared  the  line  on 
either  side  cannot  advance,  as  it  is  caught  in  enfilade. 
The  result  is  that  the  unit  which  finds  its  flanks  ex- 
posed as  it  pushes  on  when  resistance  is  slight,  is 
impatient,  and  sometimes  thinks  that  the  adjoining 
unit  is  not  doing  its  part.  We  went  forward  in  the 
usual  waves  followed  by  columns,  that  is,  literally 
with  one  hand  up  in  guard  and  the  other  ready  to 
strike  a  quick  blow.  When  a  center  resistance  is 
developed  the  wave  halts,  taking  what  cover  it  can 
find,  while  the  columns  come  up  to  its  support  in  such 
a  manner  as  the  situation  requires.  They  may  be 
able  to  take  care  of  the  situation  imniediately  with 
the  help  of  rifle  grenades;  or  trench  mortars  may 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS      345 

have  to  be  brought  up;  or,  in  the  last  event,  which 
means  delay,  an  artillery  concentration  is  requested. 
On  July  1 8th  we  had  the  bit  in  our  teeth.  We  did 
not  bother  with  too  nice  details.  We  charged  the 
machine  guns  because  we  found  that  the  machine 
gunners  in  the  early  stage  of  the  battle  yielded;  and 
we  took  the  captured  machine  guns  along  with  us  to 
fight  duels  with  other  German  machine  guns. 

Time  and  speed  were  everything  in  making  the 
most  of  the  surprise.  Every  hour  we  allowed  the 
enemy  in  which  to  recover  his  equilibrium  and  his 
spirit  and  collect  reenforcements  meant  heavier 
losses  later  on,  if  we  were  too  long  over  a  strong 
point.  Each  battalion,  company,  or  platoon  com- 
mander was  under  the  whip  of  a  single  purpose ;  he 
must  keep  up.  His  unit  must  not  delay  progress. 
Battalion  and  regimental  commanders  exposed  them- 
selves in  the  preoccupation  of  their  work.  Success 
fed  our  intrepidity.  "  Keep  pushing  while  things  are 
going  our  way  I  "  We  were  bunching  hits  when  the 
pitcher  was  rattled.  We  had  the  "  jump,"  and 
we  must  keep  it.  "  Shelling  out  "  prisoners  from 
their  dugouts  became  a  competitive  sport.  The 
more  prisoners  you  took  the  more  you  wanted  to 
take. 

I  was  wrong  in  saying  that  the  First  Division  was 
through  with  its  firsts.  The  First  took  its  first  guns 
on  July  1 8th.  It  is  captured  cannon  which  ever  have 
been  the  visible,  convincing  trophies  of  victory,  and 
particularly  so  since  standards  are  not  carried  in 
battle.  "Through  to  the  guns!"  had  really  been 
the  point  of  Ludendorff's  orders  for  his  offensives. 
We  applied  his  tactics  to  his  own  artillery.     Perspir- 


346  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ing,  radiant,  triumphant,  our  men  found  themselves 
in  possession  of  a  nest  of  batteries  of  German  77-mm. 
and  150-mm.  guns,  in  Missy  ravine.  These  deserted 
pieces,  now  only  so  much  harmless  steel,  as  well  as 
the  guns  whose  surviving  gunners  surrendered,  had 
yielded  to  the  infantry  which  had  borne  their  hateful 
long-range  blows.  It  was  like  coming  up  under  the 
long-arm  reach  of  an  adversary  with  an  uppercut 
in  close-in  fighting. 

We  gathered  in  prisoners  by  ones  and  twos  in 
ditches  and  in  houses,  in  groups  and  companies  from 
villages  and  dugouts  and  in  one  instance  by  battalion. 
The  first  wave  of  a  battalion  of  the  First  had  gone 
past  a  stone  quarry,  knitting  its  course  forward  and 
preoccupied  with  clearing  the  way.  The  mopping  up 
parties  developed  some  fire  from  the  quarry.  They 
soon  silenced  it  and  saw  Germans  rushing  into  an 
opening  which  proved  to  be  the  mouth  of  a  cave. 
The  usual  procedure  followed.  "  Will  you  sur- 
render or  be  bombed  out?  "  A  soldier  appeared  in 
response  to  the  invitation  with  a  note  from  the  com- 
manding officer  within  offering  to  surrender  the  gar- 
rison; and  some  five  hundred  men  were  marched  out, 
their  officers  looking  very  sheepish  and  the  men  with 
wondering  smiles  which  sought  to  placate  their  cap- 
tors at  the  same  time  that  they  were  significantly 
concerned  about  their  fate.  Their  apprehension  soon 
passed.  They  were  not  to  be  massacred  by  these 
savage  Americans,  who  were  grinning  at  them  and 
telling  them  to  move  along  to  the  rear. 

The  scene  across  the  fields  which  we  had  gained 
was  hardly  new  in  the  war;  but  it  was  new  to  us. 
There  had  been  small  reason  for  concealing  our 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS       347 

movements  once  the  attack  was  begun.  The  men 
in  front  who  were  mowing  their  way  toward  Soissons 
wanted  ammunition,  ambulances,  communications 
and  food — everything  that  an  army  in  movement 
requires.  The  signal  corps  people  were  reeling 
out  their  wires  to  keep  advancing  battalion  and  regi- 
mental headquarters  in  touch  with  division  head- 
quarters. To  every  officer  in  charge  of  any  kind 
of  a  train  his  was  the  supremely  important  task  of 
the  hour.  Someone  up  ahead  was  relying  on  him. 
He  must  be  at  the  front;  he  wanted  to  be  at  the 
front;  but  no  one  could  deny  the  right  of  way  to 
the  artillery  and  its  caissons  and  to  the  ammunition 
trucks.  The  fighters  might  go  hungry,  but  they  would 
not  want  for  artillery  support  or  for  cartridges. 

"  Forward,  the  guns !  "  had  become  once  more  the 
thrilling  watchword  of  action.  No  bother  about 
keeping  the  cover  of  roads  or  orchards  now;  never 
mind  the  camouflage;  unlimber  in  the  open,  pressing 
close  up  behind  the  infantry!  Fields  back  of  the 
German  lines,  which  had  been  tranquil  for  weeks 
except  for  the  bursting  of  Allied  shells,  were  still 
dew-moist  when  the  wheels  of  our  75's  ran  tracks 
across  them,  and  soon  they  were  thick  with  75's  in  a 
clamoring  raucous  chorus  of  blasts.  It  was  the  kind 
of  thing  for  which  the  75's  were  intended.  The 
delight  of  the  French  gunners  was  as  the  genius  of 
a  nation  of  gunners  in  full  triumphant  flame.  Ameri- 
cans have  snap  if  they  have  not  elan;  and  our 
gunners  for  the  first  time  were  knowing  the  ex- 
hilaration of  pursuit  with  the  guns,  of  urging  horses 
forward,  of  swinging  into  position,  of  every  trained 
man   nimble   and   knowing   his   part,    of   beginning 


348  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

to  fire  before  the  horses  were  hardly  away  from  the 
guns. 

"  We  are  with  you !     We'll  stick  close  to  you !  " 
was  the  message  of  the  guns  to  the  infantry. 

All  the  roads  from  the  forest  of  Retz  were  de- 
bouching their  streams  of  traffic  which  broke  free 
from  the  roads  where  the  ground  was  solid  in  the 
open.  Our  walking  wounded  were  coming  across 
the  fields  to  the  dressing  station.  They  came  with 
heads  up  and  something  new  in  their  bearing  which 
broke  into  smiles  and  flashed  from  the  eyes — victory 
in  open  battle !  The  wounded  who  could  not  walk 
came  in  trucks,  even  on  caissons,  when  there  were 
no  ambulances.  This  attack  had  been  so  sudden 
and  the  desire  for  secrecy  so  intense  in  limiting  the 
orders  to  combat  troops  that  in  the  mixture  of  Amer- 
icans and  French  in  the  same  action,  there  had  been 
some  misunderstanding  about  hospitalization,  which, 
even  more  than  with  the  British,  is  with  us  important 
to  the  point  of  captiousness.  There  was  no  room  on 
the  roads  for  the  ambulances  which  we  had;  and  the 
minds  that  had  conceived  that  vital  operation  held 
that  bullets  and  shells  to  press  the  advance  to  success 
by  killing  the  enemy's  fire  were  the  best  way  to  save 
lives,  not  alone  on  that  day,  but  in  all  the  future  of 
the  war,  which  was  to  be  influenced  by  the  decision 
of  that  day.  At  Saint  Mihiel  later,  when  casualties 
were  incredibly  light,  miles  of  automobiles  banked 
along  the  road  never  had  to  move  from  their  places. 

Wounded  who  waited  long  in  dressing  stations, 
who  took  passage  in  empty  trucks,  forgot  their  pain 
in  the  common  exultation  and  in  sight  of  the  pris- 
oners, who,  after  coming  across  the  fields  in  groups, 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS      349 

were  mobilized  and  sent  on  in  gray  columns  under 
smiling  guards.  It  is  the  appearance  of  guards  with 
a  line  of  prisoners,  or  the  "  breaching  "  of  a  dugout 
by  a  soldier  who  appears  in  the  doorway  with  bombs, 
which,  as  a  rule,  leads  to  the  stories  about  one  man 
talcing  anywhere  from  a  score  to  three  score  of 
Germans.  Of  course,  one  man  at  the  door  of  a 
dugout  with  a  battalion  back  of  him  owns  the 
premises  and  the  Germans  inside,  but  we  must  not 
characterize  him  as  taking  a  German  company  single- 
handed. 

There  was  certainly  something  appealing  and  sat- 
isfying in  the  sight  of  a  hundred  soldiers  of  the 
Kaiser  led  by  an  American  with  a  rifle  over  his 
shoulder,  with  three  or  four  Americans  keeping  the 
column  in  line  and  one  American  bringing  up  the 
rear.  If  the  guard  marching  ahead  happened  to  be 
a  little  Italian  from  the  East  Side  of  New  York,  it 
heightened  the  effect;  and  you  may  be  sure  that  the 
smaller  the  guard  the  more  blissfully  conscious  he 
was  of  the  tactical  advantage  of  his  position. 

The  prisoners,  if  you  excepted  the  officers  and 
the  hard-faced  Prussian  non-commissioned  officers, 
seemed  disinclined  to  bring  any  lugubriousness  into 
a  scene  of  celebration.  They  actually  seemed  to  be 
enjoying  the  "  party."  It  was  a  novel  experience 
for  them  in  more  ways  than  one.  No  familiar,  harsh 
guttural  explosive  commands  directed  their  move- 
ments. They  were  signaled  to  fall  in  and  move 
along  much  as  a  policeman  directs  traffic.  This  easy 
and  good-natured  treatment  from  our  officers  and 
non-coms  was  all  the  more  puzzling,  considering  that 
we  had  given  them  such  a  fierce  shock  of  surprise, 


350  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

and  it  added  to  the  wonder  of  all  that  they  were 
seeing  as  safe  spectators  within  the  hnes  of  their 
enemy.  Without  their  arms,  no  longer  marching 
stiffly,  many  stoop-shouldered,  many  of  middle  age, 
many  merely  boys,  these  indifferent  German  troops 
aroused  your  curiosity  as  to  how  they  could  have 
forced  the  whole  world  into  the  struggle  to  keep 
them  from  conquering  Europe.  The  answer  is  they 
were  out  of  the  machine ;  and  it  was  the  machine  that 
made  them  strong.  You  were  certain  that  no  such 
transition  was  possible  in  a  captured  Frenchman, 
Englishman,  or  American!  The  transport  drivers 
and  any  passing  troops  all  called  their  greetings  to 
the  prisoners  according  to  each  man's  sense  of 
humor. 

"  Is  this  the  whole  German  army?  " 
*'  You're  on  the  road  to  Paris?  " 
"  What  will  Kaiser  Bill  say  to  you?  " 
"  Cheer  up  I      We've  only  begun !      You'll  have 
enough   company  before   we're   through   with   this 
job!" 

"  Why,  Hans,  you  don't  know  how  the  Kaiser  will 
miss  you !  " 

The  calls  were  tart,  but  never  insulting;  and  fre- 
quently they  brought  grins  from  the  Germans.  Fre- 
quently, too,  our  calls  were  in  German;  for  it  is 
surprising  how  many  Americans  know  a  few  words 
of  German.  I  have  in  mind  two  remarks  that  I 
heard  in  the  course  of  the  battle.  One  expressed  a 
common  thought  among  our  men.  "  No  bunch  like 
that  can  lick  us!  "  said  a  stalwart  American  as  he 
looked  over  a  passing  column  of  Germans.  The 
other,  which  has  been  frequently  quoted,  was  from 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS       351 

a  German  officer,  a  hard-fighting  professional  type 
who  had  emptied  his  pistol  before  being  taken.  He 
looked  over  a  group  of  his  soldiers,  which  included 
in  the  foreground  a  narrow-chested,  studious-looking 
youth  in  glasses  and  a  short  bow-legged  man  of 
forty-five  years.  Meanwhile,  in  the  contrast  of  their 
youthTul  vigor,  a  company  of  our  men  in  reserve 
were  moving  up  to  the  front. 

"  We  have  old  men  and  boys,"  he  said,  "  who 
have  fought  for  four  years,  against  your  youth  which 
is  as  fresh  as  we  were  in  the  beginning.  I'd  like  to 
have  had  the  men  who  marched  through  Belgium 
with  me,  this  morning.  It  would  not  have  been  as 
easy  for  you.  You  are  too  young,  too  lusty,  too 
swift.    We  can't  do  it  I  " 

He  spoke  judicially;  it  was  a  professional  opinion 
with  the  touch  of  bitterness  that  after  four  years  of 
fighting,  a  people  whom  he  had  considered  wholly 
unmilitary,  a  democratic  mob,  had  sent  soldiers 
across  the  sea  whose  dramatic  attack  had  over- 
whelmed his  veterans.  It  was  hard  for  him  to  be 
philosophical.     In  his  heart  he  was  bitterly  shamed. 

From  the  moment  that  our  artillery  had  broken 
the  morning's  silence,  German  commanders  knew 
that  a  great  attack  had  begun.  They  probably 
relied  upon  their  troops  in  front  to  stay  its  progress, 
but  it  came  on  like  the  roar  of  a  surf  carried  for- 
ward by  a  neap  tide  of  unwonted  force  and  speed. 
Our  strategic  purpose  must  have  been  instantly  clear 
to  each  German  headquarters  as  the  wires  carried 
the  messages  on  into  the  presence  of  Ludendorff,  who 
on  that  day  received  the  word  that  his  confidence 
had  overshot  itself  with  the  madness  that  had  been 


352  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

provided  for  many  other  gods  in  history  before  the 
day  of  reckoning  came.  He  had  defied  military 
principles  in  the  salient;  and  after  six  weeks  of  wait- 
ing, in  which  he  had  been  further  confirmed  in  his 
audacity,  we  had  struck  back  suddenly  and  over- 
whelmingly at  the  obvious  point.  We  must  be 
stopped;  and  the  pressure  from  the  other  side  of  the 
sahent  at  Rheims  must  be  stopped.  The  will  of  the 
High  Command  must  be  imposed  upon  faltering 
units  already  in  position;  machine-gun  units  rushed 
to  their  assistance;  fresh  divisions  called  for  the 
desperate  defensive  from  the  reserves  mobilized  for 
the  oflFensive. 

By  6 :  30  the  Second  Division,  going  with  the  im- 
petus of  its  rush  over  the  top,  had  reached  its  second 
objective.  By  9 :  30  it  was  on  the  crest  overlooking 
the  village  of  Vierzy,  a  distance  of  five  miles  from  its 
starting-point.  The  right  of  the  First  was  up  to  its 
second  objective  after  having  to  pass  through  some 
difficult  defenses,  and  the  left  was  engaged  in  Missy 
ravine,  where  it  received  its  first  real  check. 

When  you  see  this  ravine  cut  into  the  plain,  you 
recognize  how  nature  devised  it  as  a  hiding-place 
for  artillery  and  for  close-quarters  defense  by 
bombers,  snipers  and  machine  guns,  which  the  Ger- 
mans know  how  to  use  to  the  utmost  when  courage 
supports  their  tactical  skill.  Its  mouth  was  about 
midway  of  the  First's  sector  of  advance,  and  broad- 
ening and  deepening,  ran  through  that  of  the  French 
division  on  the  left  flank  of  the  First.  Signs  of  the 
struggle  and  why  it  was  fierce,  though  not  why  its 
result  could  have  been  so  swift — that  was  in  the 
spirit  of  the  French  and  the  American  fighters — 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS       353 

were  visible  for  weeks  afterward.  Here,  the  Ger- 
mans had  had  time  to  recover  from  the  surprise  that 
had  overwhelmed  their  frontal  resistance ;  here,  they 
stiffened  and  set  their  teeth  and  were  hurriedly  re- 
enforced  by  units  from  the  rear  and  by  orders  that 
gave  them  no  discretion  except  resistance  to  the 
death.  They  were  fighting,  too,  to  save  thirty  guns; 
and  they  fought  bitterly,  firing  until  the  gleam  of  the 
bayonet  signaled  that  they  had  fought  their  last  fight. 

By  6  P.M.  the  Second  Division  had  entered  but  had 
not  taken  Vierzy,  where  the  Germans  had  also  stif- 
fened, but  otherwise  it  was  in  possession  of  its  third 
objective.  The  2nd  Brigade  of  the  First  had  the 
ravine,  which  was  the  line  of  the  second  objective, 
but  it  was  held  up  by  machine-gun  fire  from  the 
north  and  northeast  in  portions  of  the  ravine  still  un- 
conquered,  and  from  other  strong  points  in  the  very 
difficult  ground  outside  of  its  sector;  while  the  ist 
Brigade,  which  had  open  ground,  had  advanced  to 
the  third  objective  with  its  left  flank  toward  the 
2nd  "  refused,"  which  required  that  the  2nd  should 
press  hard  the  next  morning  if  the  advance  were 
continued.  There  was  no  doubt  that  it  would  be 
continued.  General  Mangin  was  the  army  com- 
mander. He  believed  in  the  attack.  This  colonial 
soldier,  with  five  wound  stripes  won  in  colonial  wars, 
before  the  great  war,  had  risen  from  a  colonel 
through  that  principle  of  Toujours  I'attaque!  which 
he  applied  with  a  resolute  skill;  and,  in  our  troops, 
he  found  the  quality  that  was  the  proper  weapon  of 
his  system. 

With  the  fall  of  darkness  the  traffic  on  the  roads 
seemed  to  increase,  although  by  day  this  had  ap- 


354  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

peared  impossible  and  perhaps  it  was  only  the  dark- 
ness that  gave  the  impression.  German  aeroplanes 
sought  their  targets  with  some  telling  results,  al- 
though, considering  the  amount  of  bombs  dropped, 
there  were  marvelously  few  casualties  to  men,  ani- 
mals and  transports.  Anyone  who  tried  to  breast 
that  pressing  tide  which  halted  only  to  press  on 
again,  if  he  were  in  a  car,  gave  up  the  attempt. 
He  turned  and  went  on  with  the  tide  toward  the 
front,  held  as  fast  as  a  cleat  to  a  moving  platform. 
The  batteries,  which  had  been  barking  on  the  plain, 
were  shadowy  outlines  of  riders  astride  horses,  of 
men  on  guns  and  caissons  as  they  moved  forward  to 
new  positions. 

Ammunition  and  still  more  ammunition,  and  food 
and  water  must  go  forward  close  to  the  lines  in 
range  of  bullets  as  well  as  of  shells,  before  morning 
broke.  The  engineers  had  their  orders  for  material, 
their  details  to  send  forward  to  make  defenses. 
They  work  all  day  and  night,  the  engineers;  and  are 
called  in  to  help  fight,  these  soldiers  of  rifle  and 
spade,  whom  we  associate  with  bridge  building. 
New  dressing  stations,  new  stations  of  all  kinds, 
must  be  established;  all  the  divisions'  organization, 
concentrated  on  a  narrow  front,  must  go  forward, 
each  part  finding  its  place  in  the  night.  Only  the 
infantry  which  had  been  fighting  was  supposed  to 
lie  down  after  it  had  dug  in,  and  the  gunners  also 
when  they  might  find  time. 

There  could  be  no  rest  for  commanding  ofl'icers. 
They  must  report  at  the  command  posts  of  their 
superiors  the  situation  of  their  command,  its  losses 
in  men  and  officers,   its  exact  disposition   and   its 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS       355 

morale.  The  reference  to  morale  was  always  the 
same.  The  men  wanted  to  go  on ;  that  was  all.  We 
had  already  won  enough  ground  to  make  the  opera- 
tion a  success.  It  had  been  a  great  day  in  France, 
one  of  the  greatest  days  even  in  her  military  his- 
tory. But  no  one  was  thinking  of  that  in  the  pre- 
occupation of  his  work.  Everybody  thought  of  the 
morrow's  work. 

Commanding  officers  had  to  assist  in  the  business 
of  coordinating  the  movement  of  supplies  to  their 
destinations;  and  then  return  to  the  front  to  give 
the  orders  and  make  the  arrangements  for  attack 
and  to  push  forward  their  command  posts  for  the 
morrow.  Keep  pushing — that  was  the  spirit  of  the 
fight  as  it  had  been  of  the  day,  which  General  Har- 
bord  exemplified  in  removing  his  headquarters  to 
Beaurepaire  Farm.  He  was  in  the  cellar  with  his 
staff,  under  a  flooring  in  that  exposed  target  in  the 
middle  of  an  expanse  of  fields,  which  even  a  77 
shell  would  have  pierced.  He  was  sitting  at  a  table 
which  had  been  used  by  a  German  battalion  com- 
mander who  had  occupied  the  dugout  only  that  morn- 
ing. In  another  room  the  cup  of  tea  that  a  first  lieu- 
tenant had  left  undrunk  when  our  artillery  opened 
fire  that  morning  was  undisturbed  beside  some  bis- 
cuits; and  there  were  copies  of  the  Cologne  Gazette 
and  a  book  about  the  K:.iser  as  King  and  Man, 
idealizing  him  as  the  exponent  of  Kultur  which  was 
to  be  spread  throughout  the  world  by  his  army.  If 
the  lieutenant  misses  the  book  in  his  new  quarters 
as  a  prisoner  we  shall  allow  him  to  read  President 
Wilson's  speech  in  its  place. 

Major  General  Harbord  was  conducting  opera- 


356  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

tions  in  the  midst  of  the  hottest  action  that  our 
army  had  had  since  the  Civil  War  in  the  same  quiet 
way  that  he  had  acted  as  Chief  of  Staff;  with  de- 
cisions about  movement  of  troops  as  prompt  as  when 
he  was  looking  after  routine  papers  that  crossed  his 
desk  at  G.  H.  Q.  In  going  downstairs  to  see  him 
you  had  to  step  over  a  wounded  soldier,  who  half 
awoke  from  his  sleep  if  you  were  noisy.  The  soldier 
was  quite  comfortable  there  on  the  floor;  as  he  was 
used  to  sleeping  on  floors  and  on  Mother  Earth. 
Generals  or  colonels  had  no  thought  of  asking  him 
to  move.  The  place  belonged  to  him  until  morning 
when  a  surgeon  told  him  that  if  he  were  feeling 
properly  rested  there  was  now  a  place  in  an  ambu- 
lance for  him. 

Small  rooms,  on  either  side  of  the  entrance  to  the 
house,  were  used  as  dressing  stations,  where  sur- 
geons, who,  at  home,  had  carried  about  little  black 
bags  to  bedsides  and  received  patients  in  their  ofllices 
and  diagnosed  everything  from  imaginary  dyspepsia 
to  aneurism  and  appendicitis,  might  realize  in  this 
all-night  task  that  they  were  indeed  at  the  front. 
The  room  on  the  right  apparently  looked  after  the 
walking  cases;  that  on  the  left  included  both  walking 
and  litter  cases.  One  after  another,  these  soldiers 
of  ours,  tall  or  short,  swarthy  or  blond,  in  their  dust- 
stained,  mud-spattered  khaki,  each  with  a  red  stain 
where  a  white  bandage  showed,  came  in  for  their 
second  dressing.  They  took  it  much  as  if  they  were 
lining  up  for  supper  at  the  rolling  kitchen.  They 
are  not  heroes  to  themselves,  only  to  you;  especially 
the  veterans  who  accept  wounds  as  one  of  the  fea- 
tures of  army  existence. 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS       357 

"Well,  Buddy,  where's  your  trouble?"  or, 
"Where  did  you  get  it?"  the  surgeon  asked. 
Buddy  is  the  personal  word,  although  Yanks  is  the 
generic.  There  were  a  million  Buddies  in  France. 
Whether  the  private  is  a  university  graduate  or  a 
shoe-string  vender,  he  is  a  Buddy. 

"  Shrapnel  in  the  shoulder,"  or  "  Machine-gun 
bullet  in  the  arm,"  would  be  the  reply,  as  matter-of- 
fact  as  "  Give  me  a  ticket  to  Boonville !  "  when  we 
were  supposed  to  be  an  emotional,  nervous  people. 
We  are  emotional  at  baseball  and  football  games 
and  political  conventions  and  the  banquets  of  college 
alumni  and  the  annual  gatherings  of  the  hardware 
or  the  grocerymen's  association.  Probably  we  shall 
be  at  the  future  veteran  associations,  even  if  we 
were  not  in  the  act  of  becoming  veterans. 

The  surgeon  cut  off  the  first  aid  bandage  and  put 
on  a  new  dressing,  and  agile,  knowing  fingers  bound 
it  in  place,  before  turning  to  the  next  man.  In  the 
other  room  the  men  on  litters  were  sometimes  lying 
very  still,  unconcerned  with  their  surroundings  or 
unrealizing  just  what  the  surgeons  were  doing. 
These  were  placed  in  the  first  available  ambulances, 
as  they  required  more  than  the  attention  of  a  dress- 
ing station.  Others  who  had  bullet  holes  through 
the  legs  raised  themselves  up  curiously  to  see  the  new 
dressing  applied.  They  were  no  worse  off  than  the 
walking  cases,  only  they  could  not  come  in  from  the 
line  on  their  own  feet.  Germans  as  well  as  Ameri- 
cans received  attention.  There  was  one  German  on 
a  litter  of  sacking  strung  between  two  poles  whose 
moans  rose  above  all  others  out  in  the  yard.  He 
sat  up  holding  fast  to  the  toe  of  his  boot  which  was 


358  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

bent  toward  him.  When  the  surgeon  proceeded  to 
take  off  the  boot,  the  revelation  of  the  effect  of  a 
shell  fragment  was  accompanied  by  paroxysms. 
"  The  hypodermic,  and  nothing  for  that  but  ampu- 
tation "  when  the  German  should  reach  the  operat- 
ing table  at  the  rear.  He  was  fifty  years  of  age, 
thick-set,  a  peasant,  who  probably  had  never  been 
fifty  miles  away  from  his  village  except  when  the 
Kaiser  called  him  to  his  tour  of  military  training, 
and  again  when  the  Kaiser  had  called  him  to  war. 
It  is  these  poor  pawns  of  middle  age  and  the  very 
young  boys  in  the  German  army,  set  to  destroy  vil- 
lages in  France  in  what  they  are  told  is  the  defense 
of  their  own  country,  who  arouse  your  sympathetic 
wonder  over  the  limitations  of  human  comprehension 
in  the  days  of  the  telegraph  and  the  popular  press. 

If  the  queue  of  wounded  slackened,  the  surgeons 
had  only  to  go  out  in  the  yard  to  find  others  who 
might  require  attention,  for  wounded  kept  filtering 
in  out  of  the  darkness  from  the  fields  and  the  roads. 
In  the  dim  light,  with  no  forms  clearly  outlined, 
with  some  men  standing  and  some  sitting  and  others 
lying  on  the  litters,  with  the  moist  silence  of  a  sum- 
mer night  broken  by  an  occasional  moan  or  by  deep 
breathing,  imagination  had  a  fuller  play  than  by 
daylight. 

When  morning  came  the  yard  was  still  crowded. 
A  group  of  Polish  litter-bearer  prisoners  sat  at  one 
side  with  arms  hanging  relaxed  in  the  same  position 
as  at  midnight  under  an  electric  flash.  You  looked 
at  them  curiously  to  make  sure  that  they  had  not 
been  transformed  into  statues  over  night.  In  their 
eyes  was  patience  asking  gently,   "  What  are  you 


DRIVING  TOWARD  SOISSONS      359 

going  to  do  with  us?  "  a  question  which  the  Poles 
have  been  asking  of  their  masters  for  generations — 
asking  and  watching  for  the  event  which  would 
change  the  map  of  Europe  in  their  favor.  I  had 
a  desire  to  take  off  their  field  gray  uniforms  of 
bondage  and  give  them  their  first  papers  as  citizens 
of  the  United  States,  and,  after  six  months  in  an 
American  training  camp,  to  send  them  out  to  fight 
in  winning  back  their  country  which  had  been  lost 
in  the  sport  of  kings. 


XXVIII 


VIERZY  AND  BERZY-LE-SEC 

A  temporary  hold-up  in  the  attack — The  final  rush  in  company 
with  tanks  and  Moroccans — A  regiment  that  took  two  thousand 
prisoners — A  chance  to  retire  is  a  bid  to  our  General  to 
advance — In  sight  of  Soissons — Again  we  "  get  there  " — Five 
days  of  continuous  offensive  fighting  for  our  First  Division — 
Relieved  at  last  by  a  Scotch  division  after  an  advance  of 
seven  miles,  and  the  capture  of  three  thousand  five  hundred 
prisoners  and  sixty-eight  guns — A  company  commanded  by  a 
private. 

The  scene  at  Beaurepaire  Farm  was  singularly  ex- 
pressive of  war,  because  below  stairs  an  American 
general,  who  had  been  a  major  held  in  leash  on 
the  Mexican  border,  was  in  France  directing  his 
race  horse  division  for  the  morning's  attack  with  a 
confidence  worthy  of  militant  democracy  against 
military  autocracy.  At  6  p.m.,  on  the  i8th,  as 
already  stated,  the  Second  Division  had  not  taken 
the  village  of  Vierzy  in  its  third  objective,  but  it 
had  still  six  hours  before  midnight  which  would  be 
counted  the  close  of  the  day,  and  it  meant  to  keep 
to  schedule  if  courage  and  impetuous  application 
made  this  possible.  There  is  a  deep,  broad  ravine 
which  formed  a  Y  in  the  Second's  sector  of  ad- 
vance. It  has  many  pockets,  dips  and  turns  within 
its  irregular  folds,  with  sunken  roads  and  paths  and 
clumps  of  bushes  and  trees. 

The  village  of  Vauxcastle  is  at  the  edge  of  the 

360 


VIERZY  AND  BERZY-LE-SEC        361 

western  branch  of  the  Y  and  that  of  Vierzy  is  en- 
closed in  the  eastern  branch,  the  two  villages  being 
separated  by  nearly  a  mile  of  this  tricky  recess  in 
the  plateau.  Coordination  in  such  surroundings, 
where  detachments  must  feel  their  way  against 
machine-gun  nests,  was  difficult  even  for  soldiers 
who  had  reached  their  jumping-off  places  on  the  run 
through  the  forest  of  Retz.  Before  we  were  sure 
of  Vauxcastle  and  the  western  branch  some  of  our 
men  entered  Vierzy,  where  they  secured  informa- 
tion about  the  defenses  at  the  expense  of  a  scorch- 
ing reception. 

In  these  operations  units  had  become  mixed;  and 
every  unit  had  been  reduced  by  severe  losses.  The 
first  tentative  attempt  on  Vierzy  had  been  made  with- 
out artillery  support  or  even  trench  mortars  or  gre- 
nades; simply  with  the  naked  rifle.  We  re-formed 
our  lines,  and  fifteen  tanks  and  some  Moroccan 
troops  came  to  our  assistance  in  an  attack  which 
was  supported  by  machine-gun  fire  and  a  powerful 
artillery  concentration.  We  knew  what  we  had  to 
do  and  how  to  do  it,  in  the  second  effort  at  6 :  30 
P.M.,  when  Americans  and  French  with  the  tanks 
swept  through  Vierzy  with  amazing  rapidity.  The 
high-strung,  ambitious  Second  did  not  stop  until  it 
was  well  out  on  the  plateau  and  could  report  that,  at 
the  end  of  the  most  terrific  and  successful  day  any 
American  division  in  France  had  known,  it  was  be- 
yond its  third  objective.  Night  had  come;  and  the 
disorganization  that  had  resulted  from  the  speedy 
determined  work  of  cleaning  up  machine-gun  nests 
and  hidden  snipers  in  that  paradise  for  machine  gun- 
ners had  brought  a  further  toll  of  casualties,   to 


362  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

weaken  the  units  which  had  to  be  straightened  out 
in  the  darkness. 

However,  we  had  the  ravine.  If  we  had  not  taken 
it  that  night  we  should  not  have  taken  it  the  next 
day  against  the  strong  reenforcements  which  the 
Germans  were  hurrying  up,  as  General  Harbord 
realized,  and  the  result  would  have  had  an  unfortu- 
nate effect  upon  the  whole  operation,  with  far  worse 
casualties  for  the  Second  Division.  We  did  not 
quite  know  how  we  had  accomplished  the  marvel, 
but  the  maze  of  difficulties  was  at  our  back  with  our 
hospital  corps  men  searching  for  the  wounded,  while 
all  night  the  men  in  front  were  kept  busy  readjusting 
their  line  and  digging  under  shell  and  machine  fire. 

The  Second  was  to  go  on  at  dawn  with  the  aid  of 
such  reserves  as  the  division  could  muster;  and  we 
pushed  another  mile  and  a  half — when  every  rod  was 
valuable  in  driving  toward  the  Soissons— Chateau- 
Thierry  road — until  we  were  at  the  edge  of  the  vil- 
lage of  Tigny,  when  there  was  nothing  to  do  but 
entrench.  The  Second  had  made  a  distance  equal  to 
what  the  other  divisions  were  to  make.  It  had  held 
up  its  end  in  the  fight  under  inconceivably  difficult 
conditions.  A  single  regiment  had  taken  two  thou- 
sand prisoners. 

From  the  time  that  the  men  left  Montreuil  they 
had  had  practically  no  sleep  and  no  food  and  no 
water  except  what  they  carried.  They  had  gone 
into  the  attack  on  the  jump,  and  they  had  kept  on  the 
jump,  fighting  on  their  nerves  all  through  that  sec- 
ond night  and  all  the  next  day  until  their  strength 
was  gone.  Their  spirits  were  willing,  but  their  bodies 
could  not  respond  to  their  will.     France  and  Amer- 


VIERZY  AND  BERZY-LE-SEC        363 

ica  might  say  truly,  "  Well  done !  "  when  the  sur- 
vivors who  had  swept  through  all  obstacles  were 
relieved  by  a  French  division. 

The  Germans  had  been  bringing  up  fresh  divisions 
on  the  night  of  the  i8th-i9th  against  both  the  First 
and  Second,  and  the  First  Division,  when  it  attacked 
at  four  o'clock  on  the  morning  of  the  19th,  was  to 
feel  their  effect  and  that  of  desperate  machine-gun 
resistance,  particularly  on  the  left  where  the  2nd 
Brigade  had  been  unable  to  go  beyond  the  Missy 
ravine  to  its  third  objective  on  the  i8th.  General 
Summerall  had  moved  his  headquarters  to  a  great 
cave  at  Couevres  on  the  morning  of  the  i8th;  and 
there  he  was  seated  opposite  his  chief  of  staff,  with 
the  rest  of  his  staff  at  other  tables.  Everything 
seemed  to  be  going  in  as  routine  a  fashion  as  if  the 
First  were  in  the  trenches.  The  2nd  Brigade  had 
been  able  to  go  only  to  the  Paris-Soissons  road, 
as  the  French  on  its  flank  were  held  up  and  it  was 
under  a  merciless  fire,  while  the  ist  Brigade,  which 
had  advanced  more  successfully  again,  had  its  flank 
exposed.  The  tanks  which  had  gone  ahead  to  blaze 
the  way  for  the  2nd  Brigade  had  run  into  accu- 
rate artillery  fire  that  had  arrested  their  progress. 

Major  General  Summerall  now  had  problems  of 
real  generalship  confronting  him.  The  test  of  the 
battle  had  come.  We  could  no  longer  expect  to  go 
forward  with  the  precision  of  maneuvers.  He  might 
withdraw  his  right;  but  no  such  thought  occurred  to 
him.  He  reorganized  his  forces  to  meet  the  situa- 
tion, preparatory  to  advancing  on  the  left,  and  the 
way  that  subordinate  commanders  responded  to  his 
orders  was  a  tribute  to  the  efficiency  and  coordinate 


364  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

character  of  the  division.  The  First  was  in  hand; 
it  was  receiving  very  severe  punishment,  and  it  must 
have  the  plateau  overlooking  Soissons.  The  enemy 
must  be  put  in  a  position  where  the  threat  to  his 
salient  would  be  too  firmly  established  to  be  broken. 
General  Mangin  was  not  to  be  balked  of  his  purpose, 
and  the  French  division  on  our  left  was  to  join  us  in 
renewing  the  attack  at  five  o'clock  in  the  afternoon. 

We  now  had  no  tanks  in  support,  but  our  artillery 
was  pressing  close  and  it  was  insistent,  accurate  and 
prodigal  in  its  fire.  Our  men,  as  they  advanced,  had 
glimpses  of  Soissons  on  the  river  bottom  in  the  lap 
of  the  hills.  It  was  not  in  their  objective;  but  none 
the  less  it  called  them  to  the  mastery  of  the  high 
ground  which  commanded  all  the  valley  in  the  neigh- 
borhood, while  the  French  saw  it  with  the  same 
greedy  eyes  as  in  the  pursuit  from  the  Marne  in 
1 9 14.  It  was  a  tangible,  historical,  visible  goal. 
We  should  look  down  upon  the  famous  town  and  the 
Germans  should  look  up  to  us,  if  they  wished  to  re- 
main on  this  side  of  the  heights  beyond  it,  where 
they  had  made  the  stand  in  19 14  which  was  the  be- 
ginning of  four  years  of  trench  warfare. 

Again  we  "  got  there  " — there's  something  very 
applicable  in  that  expression.  That  night  the  First's 
left  was  in  the  edge  of  the  Ploisy  ravine,  which  de- 
scends toward  the  river  level  of  Soissons,  and  its 
right  was  at  Chazelle.  Despite  the  resistance.  Gen- 
eral Summerall  had  worked  out  his  plan  in  a  way 
that  left  no  flanks  exposed.  The  First  was  in  a  bet- 
ter tactical  position  than  on  the  previous  night. 
Twenty  more  field  guns  had  been  captured  in  their 
hiding-places  in  ravines.     The  number  of  German 


VIERZY  AND  BERZY-LE-SEC        365 

dead  on  the  field  was  significant  of  how  stoutly  the 
enemy  had  fought  on  this  second  day.  We  had  an- 
other thousand  prisoners,  including  thirty-five  officers 
who  were  as  astounded  at  the  result  of  the  day's  work 
as  were  those  taken  on  the  previous  day;  for  they 
had  taken  for  granted  that  after  the  initial  surprise 
of  the  attack  and  the  German  army  took  the  situa- 
tion seriously  in  hand,  it  would  make  short  work  of 
the  Americans.  Our  walking  wounded,  returning  in 
the  darkness,  were  often  stumbling  with  fatigue; 
but  there  was  something  even  more  revealing  than 
yesterday's  hght  in  their  eyes,  when  they  lifted  their 
heads  at  the  thought  of  victory. 

Outside  our  sector  beyond  Ploisy  was  the  village 
of  Berzy-le-Sec,  which  will  hold  high  place  in  the 
annals  of  the  First  in  years  to  come.  Its  approaches 
are  wicked  for  any  attacking  forces;  the  village  itself 
is  a  natural  fortress.  As  the  French  division  on  our 
left  had  more  than  enough  obstacles  to  occupy  it 
otherwise,  we  were  asked  to  take  Berzy.  For  two 
hours  our  guns  bombarded  it  and  then  they  gave  our 
infantry  a  rolling  barrage  as  they  advanced  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  but  the  thing  could  not  be 
done  at  that  time  in  face  of  the  increasing  blasts  of 
enemy  machine-gun  fire.  But  the  First  had  already 
learned  as  the  Second  learned  at  VIerzy,  how  to  go 
about  the  second  attempt.  It  dug  in  on  the  plateau 
overlooking  the  village  and  it  raked  Berzy  with 
machine-gun  fire  and  pounded  it  with  shells  from  its 
vantage  ground  and  it  tried  to  get  a  little  sleep.  By 
this  time  it  needed  sleep;  and  its  thoughts  ran  to 
warm  meals  from  rolling  kitchens.  To  the  rear,  the 
scenes  of  other  nights  were  repeated  in  the  forward 


366  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

pressure  of  the  ammunition  trains  in  order  that  there 
should  be  no  lack  of  shells  or  bullets  to  continue  the 
fight. 

For  the  First  must  have  Berzy-le-Sec  the  next 
morning.  Shrewdly  and  irresistibly,  beginning  at 
four  when  dawn  was  hardly  breaking — which  had 
not  given  it  very  much  sleep,  by  the  way — it  worked 
its  way  forward,  cleaning  up  machine-gun  nests  un- 
til, at  9:  30  A.M.,  It  had  the  village  and  a  battery  of 
field  guns  and  many  machine  guns,  and  began  push- 
ing out  patrols  beyond  the  village.  This  was  the 
fourth  day  of  continuous  offensive  fighting  for  the 
First.  The  Moroccans  were  relieved  that  night  and 
the  plan  had  been  that  the  First  should  be  relieved. 

"  I  have  promised  my  men  that  they  shall  go  out 
to-night,"  said  General  Summerall  to  the  French 
corps  commander.  "  I  do  not  like  to  break  a 
promise." 

"  They "    The  French  commander  was  a  little 

uncertain  about  American  military  customs  in  the 
matter  of  promises. 

"  They  will  go  on !  "  General  Summerall  replied. 

Of  course  they  would — and  another  day,  and  an- 
other until  all  fell  in  their  tracks,  as  the  men  of  the 
Second  would.  On  the  22nd  they  straightened  out 
their  positions  and  took  the  sugar  refinery  east  of 
Berzy  in  the  course  of  the  operations,  without  many 
losses. 

Meanwhile,  trucks  had  been  coursing  along  the 
roads  from  the  British  front  bearing  some  canny 
and  lusty  fighters  toward  our  sector.  The  officers 
of  the  Scottish  division,  which  was  to  relieve  the 
First,  made  reconnaissances  during  the  day,  and  that 


VIERZY  AND  BERZY-LE-SEC        367 

night  skirted  figures  crept  out  with  veteran  craft  to 
take  the  Americans'  places.  They  passed  the  com- 
pliment that  we  had  made  a  "  guid  fecht  "  and  that 
they  would  carry  on.  Graves  of  Scots,  Frenchmen, 
Americans  and  Germans  mark  the  plateau  where 
the  Scots  were  to  have  some  very  vicious  fighting 
against  the  wall  the  Germans  had  formed  to  protect 
their  retreat  from  the  salient.  Our  men  marched 
away  vague  of  mind  in  their  weariness  about  the  inci- 
dents of  these  five  days — and  still  victorious. 

It  happened  that  the  Scotch  division's  artillery 
was  not  yet  all  up,  its  ammunition  trains  had  not 
arrived  and  it  was  expected  to  attack  the  next  morn- 
ing. General  Summerall  solved  this  difficulty  sim- 
ply. He  realized  how  tired  his  gunners  were ;  but  he 
was  their  old  commander  and  he  knew  their  char- 
acter. They  were  to  serve  another  day;  and  thus 
it  happened  that  an  American  artillery  general  com- 
manded Scots  and  some  French,  as  well  as  his  own 
units.  Our  weary  sanitary  force,  which  had  felt 
to  the  full  the  burden  of  its  part  in  battle,  was  also 
to  remain.  The  "  taking  over  "  by  the  Scots  from 
American  had  a  fraternal  good  nature  due  to  the 
common  language  and  it  was  singularly  smooth,  as 
a  final  testimonial  to  the  efficiency  of  the  reliable 
First  as  well  as  to  the  Scots. 

The  officers  and  men  of  the  First  felt  inexpressibly 
and  silently  the  loss  of  the  comrades  who  had  fallen; 
but  the  cost  in  dead  and  wounded,  which  was  the 
greatest  any  of  our  divisions  had  known  in  a  single 
action,  and  about  all  any  division  in  this  war  has  paid 
in  a  successful  offensive  where  it  carried  its  ob- 
jectives and  held  them  and  was  methodically  relieved, 


368  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

had  been  paid  in  striking  a  vital  blow.  Not  a  single 
soldier  of  the  First,  so  far  as  known,  had  been  taken 
prisoner.  Sixty-eight  captured  guns  were  brought 
away  from  the  field;  some  others  were  too  exposed 
to  be  removed.  As  for  the  large  numbers  of  ma- 
chine guns  taken,  the  First,  which  made  so  much  of 
the  taking  of  its  first  machine  gun,  hardly  considered 
them  worth  counting.  Approximately  seven  miles  of 
advance  was  made;  the  greatest  gain  in  any  action 
since  the  Champagne  offensive  of  19 17.  The  num- 
ber of  prisoners  was  over  3,500  with  125  officers. 
Together  the  First  and  the  Second  divisions  had 
taken  over  7,000  prisoners  and  over  100  guns. 

Officer  casualties  in  the  infantry  were  high,  espe- 
cially among  the  field  officers  of  the  First.  Colonel 
Smith,  commanding  the  26th,  had  been  killed 
by  a  machine-gun  bullet  while  making  a  reconnais- 
sance. Lieutenant  Colonel  Eliot,  of  the  26th,  was 
also  killed;  and  all  its  field  officers  were  killed 
or  wounded,  leaving  a  captain  of  two  years'  experi- 
ence commanding  the  regiment.  Two  of  the 
other  regiments  lost  all  field  officers  killed  or 
wounded,  except  a  colonel,  and  the  remaining  regi- 
ment lost  all  field  officers.  When  seniors  fell  juniors 
rose  to  the  opportunity. 

Every  battalion  of  the  two  divisions  had  its  epic; 
every  company  had  a  story  worth  telling  at  length. 
Scores  of  incidents  revealed  coolness,  daring,  cour- 
age, resource  and  endurance;  and  more  crosses  were 
earned  than  could  be  bestowed  in  an  action  of  such 
swift  processes  that  heroic  deeds  passed  without 
notice.  There  was  one  incident  which  has  a  peculi- 
arly American  appeal.     When  General  Summerall, 


VIERZY  AND  BERZY-LE-SEC        369 

who  likes  to  see  his  men  in  action  and  talk  with  them, 
was  down  in  the  front  line  at  night  he  came  to  a  com- 
pany which  had  only  fifty  or  sixty  survivors.  He 
asked  who  commanded  the  company,  and  a  private 
stood  up  and  saluted,  saying,  "  I  do,  sir !  "  With 
such  natural  leaders  as  this  we  shall  not  want  for 
officers. 

When  the  First  and  the  Second  were  back  in  their 
billeting  areas  and  the  men  had  slept  and  washed 
and  eaten  a  square  meal  for  the  first  time  in  a  week, 
they  were  playing  with  the  children  as  usual,  or  look- 
ing into  the  shop  windows  to  see  if  there  was  any- 
thing they  wanted  to  buy.  They  ate  all  the  chocolate 
the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  the  K.  of  C.  had  to  offer.  They 
smoked  a  good  many  cigarettes.  And  would  they 
have  a  chance  to  go  to  Paris  now  on  leave?  They 
had  an  idea  that  they  had  earned  that  privilege,  and 
it  was  agreed  that  they  had,  even  those  who  had  not 
won  the  cross.  They  wondered  what  kind  of  re- 
placements would  come  to  take  the  place  of  friends 
who  had  fallen.  With  all  the  new  men  the  First 
and  the  Second  would  be  different.  No !  The  First 
and  the  Second  had  a  character  established  which 
would  mold  the  recruits  into  its  likeness.  The  men 
were  not  boastful,  indeed  they  were  disinclined  to 
talk  of  their  exploits,  but  there  was  something  in  their 
attitude  which  said  that  they  had  known  battle  and 
had  proved  themselves.  As  for  the  glowing  compli- 
ments of  the  French  and  the  Croix  de  Guerre  and  the 
Medaille  Militaire  and  the  Legion  of  Honor  medals 
they  wished  to  bestow — well,  this  was  very  gratify- 
ing. 

I  have  written  at  length  about  the  part  the  First 


370  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

and  Second  divisions  played,  because  it  was  influ- 
ential in  cracking  the  shell  of  the  Marne  salient  and 
because  it  expressed  the  character  of  fighting  in  which 
other  divisions,  whose  part  in  reducing  the  salient 
may  not  be  given  as  much  prominence,  were  to  give 
the  same  gratifying  account  of  themselves. 


XXIX 


FORWARD  FROM  CHATEAU-THIERRY 

The  New  England  Division  at  Seicheprey — This  division  dislikes 
to  stop  in  an  offensive — At  last  it  had  a  chance  to  make  a  real 
attack — New  Englanders,  Pennsylvanians  and  regulars  help 
the  Germans  across  the  Marne — The  Twenty-sixth  finds  the 
enemy  has  retreated — It  follows  close  on  his  heels — Pennsyl- 
vania troops  in  the  streets  of  recaptured  Chateau-Thierry — 
The  Third  has  the  right  to  be  called  the  Marne  Division — 
Pressing  forward  beyond  the  Marne — The  Twenty-sixth  held 
up^Lines  up  with  a  brigade  from  the  Pennsylvania  Division 
and  goes  on — New  Englanders  actively  engaged  for  eight  days. 

At  the  same  time  that  General  Mangin  was  driving 
toward  Soissons,  French  and  British  divisions,  in  the 
face  of  stubborn  defenses,  were  making  sturdy  at- 
tacks at  the  Rheims  base  of  the  salient  in  order  to 
occupy  German  divisions  with  a  threat  in  this  direc- 
tion; and  also  another  American  division,  the 
Twenty-sixth,  as  well  as  the  First  and  Second,  was 
attacking  on  July  i8th. 

The  Twenty-sixth  had  had  a  hard  two  months  in 
the  Toul  sector,  where  it  had  held  more  front  than 
the  First  which  it  had  relieved;  and,  I  may  mention 
in  passing,  that  it  had  met  at  Seicheprey  in  this 
sector  the  first  serious  attack  which  our  army  had 
received.  Seicheprey  lies  on  a  flat  which  is  a  swamp 
in  the  spring  rains,  under  full  observation  from  Mont 
Sec.  The  German  "  traveling  circus  "  had  played  a 
"  one-night  stand"  here  on  April  20th.    This  circus 

371 


372  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

consisted  of  veteran  storm  troops,  with  excellent 
artillery  support,  for  making  sudden  thrusts  which 
should  prevent  the  Allied  line  from  losing  its  respect 
for  German  valor.  Applied  to  us,  it  was  probably 
meant  as  a  bit  of  frightfulness  which  would  have  a 
demoralizing  effect  upon  our  morale.  Under  a 
welter  of  artillery  fire  sufficient  for  a  grand  offensive, 
picked  storm  troops  broke  through  our  trenches  and 
into  the  village  and  having  done  what  damage  they 
could  tEey  withdrew.  Seicheprey  was  an  old  story 
in  July,  though  important  in  April;  and  it  should  be 
mentioned  as  a  primary  exhibition  of  courage  on  the 
part  of  junior  officers  and  men  in  face  of  a  concen- 
trated and  well-planned  effort. 

After  a  short  rest,  the  Twenty-sixth  had  been  sent 
to  the  Marne  salient  to  take  over  the  sector  where 
the  Second  Division  had  won  its  spurs  in  conquering 
Vaux  and  Belleau  Wood.  This  sector  was  still  ac- 
tive enough  to  be  very  wearing  on  its  occupants. 
The  Twenty-sixth  had  experienced  two  weeks  of  its 
vexations  when  it  was  ordered  to  attack  on  July  i8th 
as  the  pivot  of  the  movement  toward  Soissons.  Its 
right  resting  at  Vaux  on  the  Paris-Chateau-Thierry 
road,  it  was  to  take  the  villages  of  Torcy  and  Bel- 
leau and  advance  its  line  on  the  left  of  Bouresches. 
Thus,  the  Twenty-sixth  had  to  be  content  with  a 
strictly  limited  objective  in  the  counter-offensive  when 
months  of  stalling  had  made  it  no  less  impatient  for 
a  real  stride  than  the  First  and  Second. 

After  the  Twenty-sixth  had  taken  Belleau  and 
Torcy  and  a  hamlet  beyond  Torcy  at  the  foot  of  the 
commanding  Hill  193  in  good  fashion,  some  units, 
in  their  enthusiasm,  forgot  that  they  were  a  part  of 


A 


FROM  CHATEAU-THIERRY         373 

a  pivot  and  started  up  the  ascent.  They  were  push- 
ing along  valiantly  when  they  were  recalled  because 
this  hill  was  not  in  their  sector.  There  was  some- 
thing very  appealing  in  their  initiative,  even  if  it 
were  contrary  to  orders.  One  likes  to  dwell  on  the 
spirit  of  men  who  want  to  master  any  height.  The 
Germans  did  not  fail  to  make  prompt  use  of  193  by 
establishing  machine  guns  there  to  harass  the 
Twenty-sixth's  positions  with  plunging  fire. 

As  the  Twenty-sixth  was  to  press  against  the  lower 
side  of  the  pocket  while  the  divisions  to  the  north 
were  to  take  stitches  in  the  mouth  of  the  pocket,  it 
was  due  to  mark  time  on  July  19th.  That  is,  it 
was  to  mark  time  with  the  exception  that  the  enthus- 
ing word  came  that  193  was  to  be  taken.  After  the 
machine-gun  fire  which  they  had  endured  from  that 
direction,  the  troops  assigned  to  the  attack  went  in 
with  the  kind  of  determination  that  means  success. 
They  were  well  started  and  felt  absolutely  sure  of 
their  goal  when  once  more  they  were  recalled,  owing 
to  the  tactical  situation  which  concerned  other  divi- 
sions and  other  plans.  The  High  Command  did  not 
want  them  isolated  on  the  summit  without  support 
from  the  left.  The  men,  who  for  the  second  time 
had  charged  up  193  only  to  be  marched  down  again, 
had  not  a  favorable  opinion  of  grand  tactics  at  that 
moment.  Their  disgust  was  simple  and  human. 
Evidently,  the  Twenty-sixth,  which  had  endured 
Mont  Sec,  was  always  to  sit  under  fire  from  hills. 
An  offensive  for  the  Twenty-sixth  meant  that  the 
hand  was  off  the  collar  of  the  dog  of  war,  but  he 
could  only  go  to  the  end  of  the  leash.  But  pa- 
tience Is  the  great  thing  for  all  who  chafe  at  restraint 


374  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

in  war.  The  Twenty-sixth  was  to  be  given  the  leash 
and  a  free  field  later. 

By  the  end  of  the  third,  if  not  at  the  end  of  the 
first  day  of  the  drive  toward  Soissons,  the  Germans 
must  have  known  that  they  would  have  to  retire  at 
least  from  the  lower  portion  of  the  salient.  Their 
problem  was  to  save  as  much  of  their  material  as 
they  could  by  their  resistance;  ours  to  press  as  hard 
as  we  could  to  accomplish  the  results  which  they 
wished  to  avoid.  American  divisions  of  the  Paris 
group — called  for  purposes  of  "  telegraphic  camou- 
flage "  Kitty  and  Jennie  and  other  feminine  names, 
which  seemed  strange  diminutives  for  organizations 
of  warriors, — were  now  to  carry  out  the  purpose  of 
their  presence  by  not  holding  trenches  for  the  de- 
fense of  Paris  but  of  fighting  in  the  offensive.  Co- 
operating with  the  French,  they  were  to  learn,  as 
they  advanced  in  face  of  machine-gun  nest^  and  har- 
assing artillery  fire,  the  lessons  in  maneuver  and  in 
suppleness  and  coordination  which  were  to  be  the 
final  course  in  instruction  before  the  organization  of 
our  army  as  an  integral  force.  As  a  part  of  General 
Pershing's  system  of  progressive  education,  the  First 
Corps,  under  Major  General  Hunter  Liggett,  was 
functioning  in  active  battle  for  the  first  time  with 
the  Twenty-sixth  and  a  French  division  under  its 
command. 

The  German's  first  answer  to  the  Soissons  drive 
was  to  close  the  fatuous  incident  of  crossing  the 
Marne  by  the  withdrawal  of  his  troops  from  the 
south  bank  of  the  Marne,  which  he  accomplished 
by  returning  as  he  had  come,  on  bridges  and  pas- 
seroles,  on  the  night  of  the  I9th-20th  to  the  north 


FROM  CHATEAU-THIERRY         375 

bank,  where  he  kept  up  machine-gun  fire  to  hold  back 
the  patrols  of  the  Third  Division  from  following 
immediately;  but  they  were  active  enough  to  ascer- 
tain the  situation.  Now,  as  we  applied  the  pincers 
to  the  point  of  the  salient,  both  banks  of  the  river 
were  to  be  ours  again;  and  Chateau-Thierry  was  to 
be  ours  again. 

On  July  20th,  our  Third,  Twenty-eighth  and 
Twenty-sixth  divisions  were  to  know  something  of 
the  exhilaration  that  the  First  and  Second  had  known 
on  the  1 8th.  They  were  to  drive  ahead;  but  before 
them  was  no  sweep  of  plateau  with  objectives  in  a 
straight  line,  but  a  river  with  all  its  bridges  down 
for  the  Third  and  Twenty-eighth,  while  all  the 
region  around  Chateau-Thierry  forming  the  walls 
of  the  Marne  consists  of  high  hills,  irregular  in 
contour,  of  ravines  and  forests  and  patches  of  woods 
and  roads  under  observation. 

The  Twenty-sixth  had  its  left  at  Torcy  and  its 
right  at  Vaux  in  the  valley  before  the  rise  in  the 
Paris  road  over  the  crest,  where  it  turns  to  the  right 
in  a  sharp  ascent  toward  Chateau-Thierry.  On 
July  20th,  the  Twenty-sixth  attacked  and  met  with  a 
wicked  and  galling  resistance  from  machine  guns 
which  were  in  position  to  cover  the  German  retreat 
from  Chateau-Thierry  and  the  Marne.  Our  line 
was  held  up  in  places;  that  was  the  German  inten- 
tion at  any  cost,  until  a  certain  amount  of  time  was 
gained;  but  in  face  of  the  certainty  that  the  defend- 
ing force  must  break  under  renewed  pressure,  as 
soon  as  we  brought  up  reserves  and  made  new  dis- 
positions. 

When  the  Twenty-sixth  started  to  attack  on  the 


376  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

early  morning  of  the  2ist  there  was  nothing  to 
attack.  The  German  was  going;  and  the  Twenty- 
sixth  was  to  give  chase.  Its  pursuing  and 
watchful  patrols  were  followed  by  the  troops  in 
columns  as  they  passed  by  positions  which  had 
vomited  fire  at  them  for  the  last  two  weeks,  past 
abandoned  German  ammunition,  discarded  German 
helmets  and  all  the  evidences  of  hasty  withdrawal, 
including  one  nine-inch  gun  as  well  as  field  guns, 
which  the  Germans  could  not  bring  away.  It  was 
a  march  clear  past  the  Chateau-Thierry— Soissons 
road,  before  the  patrols  called  a  halt  in  face  of  the 
next  line  of  resistance;  a  march,  yes,  but  in  fact  a 
compficated  maneuver  along  poor  country  roads  up 
hill  and  down,  keeping  liaison  with  the  French  troops 
on  the  right  and  left  and  requiring  extreme  sensi- 
tiveness on  the  part  of  the  feeling  fingers  ahead, 
and  care  lest  any  unit  should  fall  into  some  trap 
which  was  laid  under  the  flanking  fire  of  hid- 
den machine  guns  and  a  concentration  of  artillery 
fire. 

Army,  corps,  and  division  commands  were  urging 
speed  in  front  and  in  the  rear.  The  German  was 
going;  we  knew  not  how  far  at  the  time.  The  natu- 
ral offensive  spirit  of  troops,  in  the  first  intoxicating 
experience  of  pursuit,  made  us  hug  the  enemy  close. 
He  must  be  given  no  leisure.  If  you  look  at  a  big 
map  marked  with  the  lines  of  the  Allies'  advance 
each  day  as  they  pressed  in  on  the  salient  you  will 
see  that  after  the  i8th,  the  21st  was  the  next  red- 
letter  day,  when  the  Germans  yielded  Chateau- 
Thierry  and  the  north  bank  of  the  Marne,  which 
winds  northeast  beyond  Chateau-Thierry  to  Mont 


A 


FROM  CHATEAU-THIERRY         377 

St.  Pere,  and  the  great  forest  of  Barbillon  to  the 
north  of  Chateau-Thierry,  and  a  depth  of  from  three 
to  ten  miles  in  the  rough  form  of  a  boot  leg  from 
the  river  north  to  Montgru-St.  Hilaire. 

The  forest  of  Trugny  extends  as  a  tongue  from 
the  northeast  corner  of  the  great  forest  of  Barbillon, 
and  near  the  forest  is  the  hamlet  of  Trugny  and 
north  of  it  the  village  of  Epieds;  and,  in  this  forest 
and  in  these  villages,  the  Germans  awaited  the 
Twenty-sixth  with  many  nests  of  hidden  machine 
guns  and  field  batteries  in  their  support  to  cover  the 
Jaulgonne— Fere-en-Tardenois  road.  There  was  an 
end  of  marching  in  columns  as  our  patrols  devel- 
oped the  enemy,  but  the  full  force  of  the  resistance 
was  carefully  held  under  cover  until  we  began  an 
attack.  The  enemy  had  planned  to  annihilate  these 
impetuous  fresh  American  troops  at  this  point  and 
also  any  French  on  either  flank,  for  he  required 
time  in  this  direction,  on  the  22nd  day  of  July,  to 
protect  his  retreat,  particularly  as  the  French,  in- 
cluding our  Third  Division,  were  now  pressing 
toward  Jaulgonne  in  the  other  direction.  It  was 
a  race  on  the  part  of  our  converging  forces  in  that 
region  of  forests,  hills  and  ravines  to  put  the  Ger- 
mans in  pockets  within  their  pocket,  and  on  their 
part,  by  the  use  of  their  corps  d'elite,  the  machine 
gunners,  with  unlimited  guns  and  ammunition,  to  stay 
our  advance. 

While  the  Twenty-sixth  was  going  against  the 
positions  at  Trugny  and  Epieds,  an  officer,  who 
skirted  the  front  from  American  division  to  Ameri- 
can division  with  glimpses  of  everything  from  com- 
bat waves,  and  columns  or  sniping  patrols  of  our 


378  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

men  advancing  against  machine-gun  fire  to  all  the, 
transport  of  an  army  in  movement  at  the  rear,  might 
have  an  expansion  of  spirit  in  the  visual  realization 
of  our  success,  which  was  in  some  respects  equally 
as  convincing  as  that  on  the  fields  of  the  drive  to 
Soissons.  I  doubt  if  anyone  who  has  not  been  close 
to  the  war  for  four  years  until  all  its  routine  has 
become  horribly  normal  can  feel  as  deeply,  when 
we  do  have  a  thrill,  as  we  old  fellows  of  the  war 
whose  emotions  have  become  dormant,  only  to  rise 
on  such  occasions  as  this  with  all  the  cumulative 
effect  of  experience  of  association  as  fuel  to  the 
flame. 

Chateau-Thierry  was  a  good-sized  town.  Its 
bridges  bestrode  the  Marne.  Town  and  river  to- 
gether were  a  talisman  of  victory.  I  confess  that  as 
I  rode  into  its  streets  something  which  rose  from 
the  region  of  my  heart  was  fast  in  my  throat. 
Chateau-Thierry  would  not  be  taken  again  by  the 
enemy.  The  tag  on  the  rope  of  the  four  years'  tug- 
of-war  had  finally  been  drawn  to  our  side  to  remain. 
French  poilus  were  moving  about  in  the  town  in 
their  same  characteristic  supple,  utterly  un-German 
fashion.  I  think  that  the  Lord  made  a  French- 
man in  order  to  have  a  contrast  with  a  Prussian. 
The  few  residents  who  had  not  flown  before  the 
enemy,  were  visible  through  the  open  doorways  of 
the  deserted  city;  and  they  suggested  undemonstra- 
tive watchmen  who  had  kept  its  altar  fires  burning 
during  the  alien  occupation. 

A  column  of  soldiers  of  the  Twenty-eighth  Divi- 
sion was  halted  in  the  street  leading  north  to  the 
Soissons  road,  on  its  way  to  join  the  Twenty-sixth 


/\ 


FROM  CHATEAU-THIERRY         379 

Division.  The  German  artillery  began  a  bombard- 
ment. Shells  were  falling  on  both  sides  of  the 
streets  with  the  usual  muffled  crashing  report  of  shell- 
bursts  in  buildings. 

"  I  guess  it's  better  being  in  the  streets  than  in 
billets,"  said  one  of  the  men.    "  Probably  the  Boche 

are  shooting  at  the  streets "  which  was  good 

philosophy. 

Down  by  the  river  one  span  of  each  of  the  bridges 
had  been  dropped  in  a  pile  of  stone  and  mortar  on 
the  river  bottom;  and  you  looked  across  at  a  rail- 
road engine,  which  was  pioneering  the  reestablish- 
ment  of  communications  on  the  line  to  Epernay,  and 
to  where  our  machine  gunners  of  the  Third  Division 
had  kept  their  vigil  when  to  expose  yourself  on  that 
river  bank  was  death.  A  new  pontoon  bridge  had 
been  laid.  Along  the  road  which  follows  the  north 
bank  of  the  river,  American  wagon  trains  and  cars 
were  moving  forward  tossing  up  mantles  of  dust 
through  the  ruins  of  Gland;  and  near  Gland  was 
another  pontoon  bridge,  with  fresh  shell  holes  from 
2io's  in  the  neighborhood  of  this  fair  target  for 
German  long-range  guns.  German  pontoons  which 
had  been  torn  by  shrapnel  lay  along  the  bank;  and 
German  dead  were  still  unburied.  We  were  using 
German  pontoons  in  making  another  bridge.  Mezy, 
across  the  river,  where  that  half-company  of  the 
Third  had  held  out  with  such  redoubtable  tenacity, 
was  silent  and  peaceful  against  the  background  of 
summer's  dark  green. 

The  Third,  which  might  be  called  the  Marne 
division,  could  lay  claim  to  still  further  interest 
in  the  Marne.    It  had  held  the  bridge ;  it  had  checked 


38o  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  offensive  of  July  15th  on  its  front;  and  now  it 
had  the  Marne  at  its  back.  Major  General  Dick- 
man,  a  division  commander  who  had  the  satisfaction 
of  pursuit  after  his  resolute  stonewalling,  was  sitting 
by  the  roadside  outside  of  Mont  St.  Pere  writing 
an  order.  Shells  were  falling  steadily  in  the  village, 
and  they  were  being  aimed  at  the  road  on  the  other 
side  of  him;  but  he  was  too  interested  in  the  order 
to  notice  the  fact.  Another  German  battery  was 
paying  its  respects  to  the  slopes  of  the  hill  of  St. 
Pere  in  the  background,  but  our  men  had  already 
passed  over  the  hill  if  they  were  the  object  of  the 
fire.  The  German  gunners  were  missing  us  all 
around,  Major  General,  wagon  trains  and  bridges, 
but  kicking  up  a  lot  of  dust  about  the  regimental 
commanders'  dugout  in  the  village. 

The  Third  had  been  fighting  continuously  since 
July  15th,  and  some  of  its  units  had  to  march  by 
the  lower  bridges  beyond  Chateau-Thierry,  followed 
by  its  transport,  in  order  to  reach  their  present  posi- 
tions. They  were  tired  beyond  the  comprehension 
of  any  man  who  has  not  carried  a  pack  and  a  rifle, 
but  that  did  not  matter  to  the  defenders  of  the  Marne 
who  were  driving  the  enemy  away  from  the  Marne. 
Khaki  figures  were  visible  from  the  hills  pushing  for- 
ward around  Chartreves  and  into  Chartreves.  One 
village  taken,  the  thing  was  to  take  another.  Beyond 
Chartreves  was  Jaulgonne,  along  a  road  in  rough 
country  with  steep  ascents  away  from  the  river 
toward  the  north  and  with  no  limit  to  the  obstacles 
on  the  way,  beside  the  hard  fighting  which  brought 
up  fresh  German  regiments  in  vain  to  stay  our  prog- 
ress.    The  Third  was  dogged  in  its  weariness,  re- 


FROM  CHATEAU-THIERRY         381 

ceiving  a  fresh  impetus  with  each  success,  and  its  new 
artillery  was  vigorous  in  support. 

Along  the  roads  toward  Epieds,  where  the 
Twenty-sixth  was  operating,  you  had  the  coagulated 
effects  of  the  pressure  of  men  and  transport  to  the 
front  in  its  most  baffling  aspect  to  commanders.  The 
Twenty-sixth  had  not  enough  roads  for  its  purpose. 
It  had  had  to  change  front  in  the  course  of  its  move- 
ment, adopting  itself  to  different  tactical  require- 
ments as  well  as  different  terrain.  Its  units  were 
still  somewhat  mixed  after  their  rush  from  Torcy, 
when  on  the  morning  of  the  22nd  it  kept  faith  with 
orders  and  the  demands  of  the  situation,  which  re- 
quired that  no  time  be  lost  by  attacking.  The  Ger- 
mans had  four  days  in  which  to  prepare  for  our 
reception  and  the  full  nature  of  it  now  developed. 
The  villages  of  Epieds  and  Trugny  were  hives  of 
machine  guns;  and  machine  guns  were  cunningly 
hidden  in  the  wheat  fields  awaiting  targets  that  had 
to  move  across  the  open  in  full  view.  There  are 
things  that  brave  men  can  do  and  things  that  they 
cannot.  The  Twenty-sixth  could  not  take  these  vil- 
lages that  day.  Some  intrepid  units  miraculously 
entered  the  Trugny  woods  in  face  of  machine-gun 
storms  in  a  daring  effort  to  flank  out  the  village  of 
Trugny,  but  this  was  not  the  practicable  way,  as 
they  found. 

We  had  revealed  the  enemy's  hand;  we  had  in- 
formation. He  in  turn  rested  and  relied  upon  his 
artillery  which  sent  over  gas  where  he  thought  it 
would  be  most  effective,  and  shrapnel  and  high  ex- 
plosives where  he  thought  that  they  would  be  most 
effective.      Our  wounded,   earth-stained  and  good- 


382  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

natured,  crawling  through  the  wheat  and  out  of  the 
woods,  went  filtering  back  through  the  ravines  away 
from  the  glut  of  the  roads.  The  tall  figure  of  Major 
General  Edwards  was  seen  going  from  command 
post  to  post,  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  situation. 
His  own  headquarters  were  at  Grand  Picardie  Farm, 
where  a  big  shell  hole  through  the  thick  walls  let 
in  the  light  on  the  table  where  he  worked,  and  his 
staff  officers  had  their  offices  in  the  stalls  of  the 
stable,  while  our  155  (long)  guns  were  barking 
nearby. 

Of  course  the  attack  was  to  be  continued.  The 
enemy  must  go.  The  next  night  a  regiment  rushed 
Trugny  Wood,  breaking  down  machine-gun  oppo- 
sition, and  driving  through  the  thickets  almost  to 
the  other  side  of  the  wood,  but  it  was  flanked  by 
machine-gun  fire  which  neither  artillery  fire  nor  rifle 
grenades  nor  automatic  rifles  nor  sniping  could  over- 
come. The  engineers  of  the  Twenty-sixth  made  an 
equally  audacious  supporting  movement  toward 
Trugny,  in  which  the  leadership  of  one  officer  was 
conspicuous;  and  they  held  tenaciously  to  their 
ground.  We  had  made  the  enemy  pay;  we  had 
silenced  many  of  his  guns,  but  not  enough.  We  must 
try  again. 

Two  battalions  of  the  Twenty-eighth  Division  had 
already  been  placed  at  the  Twenty-sixth's  disposal. 
Now  the  rest  of  their  brigade  was  brought  up.  The 
Twenty-eighth  was  going  through  that  stage  of  its 
divisional  experience,  which  had  been  the  lot  of 
other  divisions,  in  having  its  units  separated  under 
other  commands.  This  meant  the  application  of  bat- 
tle lessons  in  association  with  veteran  officers  and 


FROM  CHATEAU-THIERRY         383 

commanders,  but  the  pupils  always  look  forward  to 
the  day  when  they  shall  be  a  part  of  their  own  intact 
command. 

This  56th  Brigade  had  been  for  two  days  with- 
out sleep  on  the  march  from  the  other  side  of 
the  Marne  along  dusty  roads  by  the  lower  bridges. 
It  had  been  subject  to  many  annoyances  which  are 
inevitable  when  troops  are  being  spurred  forward  in 
pursuit  with  roads  jammed  and  columns  converging, 
and  when  the  movement  of  all  units  is  subject  to  the 
needs  of  the  moment  in  open  warfare.  Now  it  was 
to  be  sent  into  Trugny  Wood  to  assist  the  Twenty- 
sixth  in  the  next  attack  set  for  the  morning  of  the 
24th — the  attack  which  was  to  go  home. 

However  tired  the  New  Englanders  and  Penn- 
sylvanians  were  they  would  keep  at  it  until  they  had 
the  wood  and  the  two  villages.  As  the  result  of  our 
attacks  and  our  persistent  fire  and  our  preparations 
the  Germans  withdrew  and  the  spring  was  in  tired 
legs  again  as  we  took  up  hot  pursuit.  The  motor 
machine-gun  battalion  of  the  Twenty-sixth,  taking 
the  place  of  cavalry,  was  given  the  right  of  way 
through  the  troops  by  Major  General  Edwards. 
Disregarding  everything  but  speed,  it  hurried  on 
to  the  Jaulgonne— Fere-en-Tardenois  road,  where  it 
posted  itself  in  face  of  the  enemy's  machine  guns 
and  held  its  position — a  very  brilliant  stroke  with 
all  the  romance  of  any  cavalry  charge. 

That  night  the  pushing  Twenty-sixth  was  in  touch 
with  the  next  line  of  defense  of  the  Germans  and 
it  and  the  brigade  of  the  Twenty-eighth  were  re- 
lieved by  the  Forty-second  Division,  which  had  come 
from  its  successful  resistance  to  the  German  offensive 


384  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

of  July  15th.  The  taking  of  Epieds  and  Trugny  and 
Jaulgonne,  as  a  part  of  the  operations  of  the  other 
Allied  troops,  closed  the  first  stage  of  the  fight  for 
the  salient. 

The  Marne  salient  was  no  longer  a  pocket.  It 
was  a  bow.  The  next  stage  in  the  advance  would 
be  the  River  Ourcq.  For  eight  days  now  the 
Twenty-sixth  had  been  actively  engaged,  always 
under  fire.  When  it  was  not  attacking  it  was  in 
pursuit  or  preparing  for  attack.  There  had  been  no 
rest  for  officers  and  men;  all  New  England  wanted 
was  to  wash  off  the  accumulated  dust  of  those  eight 
days  and  to  sleep.  But  in  the  tired  eyes  of  gaunt 
figures  staggering  with  fatigue  there  was  the  gleam 
of  victory. 


XXX 

THE    HEIGHTS   OF   THE   OURCQ 

The  Rainbow  Division  to  the  front — ^Red  Cross  Farm — The  attack 
through  a  ditch — ^The  famous  Heights  of  the  Ourcq — ^Rainbows, 
regulars  and  the  Pennsylvania  division  fight  their  way  toward 
them — A  Pennsylvania  brigade  crosses  the  Ourcq — ^The  Thirty- 
second  Division  from  Michigan  and  Wisconsin  in  the  fight — 
History  and  character  of  the  famous  Thirty-second — Particu- 
larly belligerent,  especially  from  Milwaukee — The  hand-to- 
hand  fight  at  night — A  tough  proposition — Fierce  fighting 
when  the  Rainbows  crossed  the  Ourcq  and  attacked  the  height 
beyond — The  men  from  Michigan  and  Wisconsin  storm  the 
heights — Our  boys  advance  under  machine-gun  fire  quietly 
smoking  cigarettes — Victory  at  last,  and  our  men  eat  captured 
German  rations. 

It  was  under  sniping  from  riflemen,  machine-gun  fire 
and  persistent  dogging  artillery  fire,  grimly  sugges- 
tive enough  of  the  task  which  it  had  in  hand,  that 
the  Forty-second  relieved  the  Twenty-sixth  Division. 
There  is  a  temptation,  as  they  come  from  different 
States,  to  mention  the  regiments  of  the  Rainbow 
Division,  only  this  would  mean  mentioning  all  the 
American  regiments  engaged,  which  would  require  a 
book  for  each  regiment,  if  one  fully  narrated  its 
exploits.  Again,  there  are  no  States  or  counties  in 
the  A.  E.  F.,  which  is  entirely  United  States,  al- 
though spirit  of  corps  is  welcomed  in  every  unit, 
while  the  division  for  tactical  purposes  is  the  unit  to 
which  one  naturally  refers. 

My  purpose  in  dwelling  on  the  taking  of  the  Red 
385 


386  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

Cross  Farm  is  not  to  exploit  the  valor  and  the 
shrewdness  shown  in  its  storming  as  exceptional,  but 
because  it  was  such  a  characteristic  illustration  of  the 
opposition  which  we  had  to  overcome  on  the  way  to 
the  Vesle.  The  buildings  of  the  farm  form  a  big 
compound,  of  a  type  familiar  in  France.  Its  thick 
walls  of  stone  and  mortar  will  stop  machine-gun 
bullets.  The  effect  of  a  shell  which  penetrates  the 
walls  is  localized  in  the  room  where  it  bursts. 
Wooden  farm  buildings  at  home,  being  readily  set 
on  fire  by  incendiary  shells,  would  be  of  little  service 
for  defense;  those  in  France  become  veritable 
fortresses,  with  their  deep  cellars  turned  into  refuges, 
when  the  walls  were  falling  from  a  concentration  of 
high-explosive  shells,  which  is  the  best  medicine  for 
them.  Out  of  the  debris  the  machine  gunners  build 
strong  emplacements  for  their  guns,  and  they  come 
out  of  the  cellar  to  man  any  surviving  guns  when  the 
bombardment  is  over. 

The  Red  Cross  Farm  was  ideally  located  for  Ger- 
man purposes  in  the  midst  of  an  open  field,  with  its 
main  buildings  looking  toward  two  roads  of  approach 
from  two  sides  of  the  forest,  which  made  its  location 
suggestive  of  the  house  of  a  pioneer  in  a  clearing. 
The  Germans  had  concentrated  their  machine  guns 
at  the  farm  and  at  the  entrance  of  the  forest  where 
they  could  sweep  the  roads.  When  we  came  through 
the  forest  we  were  in  full  view  of  the  farm,  which 
had  machine  guns  under  the  roof,  on  the  second 
floor  and  on  the  lower  floor,  and  also  in  bushes  in 
front  of  the  buildings,  I  am  told.  There  was  evi- 
dently not  a  square  foot  of  space  on  three  sides 
that  the  guns  did  not  command. 


THE  HEIGHTS  OF  THE  OURCQ    387 

The  farm  looked  innocently  peaceful  until  we 
aroused  the  hornets;  and  we  did  not  arouse  them  all 
with  a  patrol  of  a  few  men.  This  required  a  demon- 
stration in  force.  The  German  commander  was  not 
going  to  display  all  the  cards  in  his  hand  until  it 
was  worth  while.  The  Forty-second  had  fought  its 
way  forward  through  the  woods  under  gas  and  shells 
and  sniping  to  find  that  this  farmhouse  held  the  key 
to  the  positions  ahead,  while  it  was  supported 
by  strong  forces  of  German  infantry  at  other 
points. 

After  six  hours'  effort  at  encircling  and  flanking 
a  simpler  plan  was  revealed.  It  happened  that  a 
ditch  ran  along  the  road  from  the  south,  past  the 
farm  on  the  one  side  which  was  unprotected,  and 
that  the  ditch  was  hidden  by  a  straggling  growth 
of  bushes  all  the  way  from  the  forest  right  up  to  the 
entrance  to  the  compound.  The  ditch  and  bushes 
were  not  on  the  military  map;  perhaps  the  bushes  had 
grown  up  since  the  map  was  made.  There  are  many 
features  in  terrain  which  are  not  on  even  the  largest 
scale  maps;  and  this  accounts  for  the  desire  of  ener- 
getic battalion  commanders  to  see  for  themselves 
where  they  are  going.  Whether  or  not  the  grass 
or  grain  in  a  field  has  been  cut  is  a  matter  of  vital 
importance.  A  patch  of  pole  beans  in  a  garden,  or 
an  isolated  shrub,  may  conceal  a  machine  gun. 

It  did  not  require  any  staff  councils  to  appreciate 
the  value  of  that  ditch  and  that  line  of  bushes.  In 
the  early  morning  of  the  26th  two  platoons  led  by 
two  lieutenants  crept  up  the  ditch.  Their  adventure 
was  the  more  daring  and  perilous  as  they  did  not 
know  how  many  gunners  and  machine  guns  were  en- 


388  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

sconced  in  the  group  of  buildings;  but  they  had  no 
doubt  of  the  result  once  they  came  to  close  quarters 
with  the  gunners.  Then  the  man-to-man  element 
counted.  It  was  light  enough  for  our  men  to  see 
when  they  rushed  into  the  compound  and  scattered 
for  the  entrances  to  the  buildings. 

You  recollect  the  painting  of  the  two  men  with 
pistols  drawn  across  a  table  which  was  a  very  im- 
promptu duel,  and  many  pictures  of  "  hands  up  "  in 
Western  saloons,  and  what  happens  when  the  train 
robber  appears  in  the  railroad  coach,  six-shooter  in 
hand.  There  were  not  even  impromptu  dueling 
formalities  on  this  occasion.  It  was  a  matter  of 
"  getting  the  drop  "  on  the  other  fellow.  The  Ger- 
mans were  not  expecting  us  and  were  either  at  their 
guns  with  their  backs  to  us,  or  drowsing;  and  we 
knew  why  we  were  there  and  that  every  second 
counted.  There  was  very  ugly  individual  fighting 
while  it  lasted,  and,  when  it  was  over,  the  survivors 
of  the  two  platoons  had  possession  of  the  farm  and 
a  machine  gun  for  every  survivor,  and  more  ammuni- 
tion than  they  could  carry  forward  for  firing  at  the 
Germans. 

This  was  only  one  farm;  its  taking  appealingly 
sensational.  Every  farm  on  any  German  line  of  re- 
sistance was  a  machine-gun  nest.  White  Cross  Farm 
was  also  stubborn  and  won  by  determined  charges; 
but  it  was  the  taking  of  Red  Cross  that  opened  the 
way  for  the  division  to  the  Ourcq,  which  is  a  thread 
of  a  stream  except  when  a  rain  swells  it  from  the 
watershed  of  the  famous  "  heights  of  the  Ourcq." 
These  sweep  down  in  long  descents  to  the  river  bed, 
with  great  stretches  of  open  field,  and  they  are  quite 


THE  HEIGHTS  OF  THE  OURCQ     38^ 

up  to  their  reputation  as  heights,  as  every  soldier  of 
four  American  divisions  will  agree. 

Now  the  right  flank  of  the  Forty-second  found 
itself  in  the  open  while  the  left  was  still  in  the 
irregular  Forest  de  Fere.  On  that  immense  apron 
sweeping  down  toward  the  bend  in  the  Ourcq,  in 
front  of  Sergy  and  Cierges,  there  was  a  single  tree, 
which,  for  the  climbing,  offered  a  view  clear  up  to 
the  edge  of  the  forest  and  to  the  heights  on  the  other 
side  of  the  river.  I  have  no  recollection  of  any  more 
important  tree  than  this  isolated,  scrubby  sentinel. 
A  German  observer  occupied  it,  with  a  telephone, 
and  he  also  had  a  saw  with  a  view  to  preventing  any 
successor  enjoying  his  privileges.  He  had  cut  two 
or  three  inches  into  the  trunk  before  our  skirmishers' 
bullets  hissed  "  Woodman,  spare  that  tree !  "  and 
brought  him  down.  But  he  had  served  the  purpose 
of  directing  the  German  guns  where  to  find  the 
Americans  who  had  not  come  in  view  of  the  heights 
of  the  Ourcq  and  to  be  ready  for  them  when  they 
did  come  in  view. 

Shell  fire  was  not  going  to  stop  the  Forty-second, 
particularly  when  it  passed  over  the  rise,  and,  before 
it,  down  the  apron,  lay  a  dark  run,  which  was  the 
river  bed,  the  fringes  of  trees,  and  beyond  it  the 
same  upward  sweep  of  fields  dotted  by  woods.  It 
was  a  great  panorama  of  landscape;  and  the  broad 
view  included  on  the  right  advancing  figures  in 
khaki  which  did  not  belong  to  the  Forty-second. 
These  were  men  of  the  55th  Brigade  of  our  Twenty- 
eighth  Division  attacking  the  village  of  Fresnes. 
On  their  right  was  the  Third  Division,  which  had 
fought  its  way  through  from  Jaulgonne.    Thus  three 


390  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

American  divisions  were  moving  together  towards 
the  heights  of  the  Ourcq. 

Would  the  Germans,  now  the  salient  was  pushed 
into  a  bow,  make  a  stand  on  the  Ourcq?  These  di- 
visions were  not  bound  by  speculative  inquiries. 
They  were  on  their  way  to  secure  a  direct  answer. 
The  hidden  batteries  in  the  Meuniere  Wood  east  of 
Sergy,  with  this  procession  in  full  view,  had  such  a 
number  of  targets  that  they  could  not  hope  to  stop 
such  a  systematic  movement.  We  swept  through 
the  shell  fire  and  the  machine-gun  fire  which  de- 
veloped as  we  approached  the  Ourcq.  It  was  better 
to  go  forward  than  to  go  back  and  we  went  forward. 
That  night  the  Forty-second  had  some  of  its  elements 
across  the  Ourcq,  and,  after  a  hard  day,  it  knew  by 
the  machine-gun  fire  and  shell  fire  from  the  heights 
beyond  Sergy  and  Cierges,  that  the  German  was  not 
in  any  mood  to  yield  such  excellent  positions  without 
a  fight,  which  was  a  further  justification  for  the 
Forty-second  in  driving  down  those  exposed  reserve 
slopes. 

July  27th,  including  what  the  Forty-second  and 
the  other  American  divisions  had  gained,  was  an- 
other red-letter  day,  as  the  whole  Allied  line  had 
advanced  from  Basileux  in  the  direction  of  Rheims 
to  Bruyeres  in  the  direction  of  Soissons,  and  on  the 
28th  the  line  was  to  move  forward  over  a  greater 
length,  if  not  for  as  much  depth,  in  the  process  of 
pursuit  and  closing  in  on  the  enemy's  new  line  of 
resistance.  It  is  well  to  bear  in  mind  that  immense 
forces  were  engaged  in  the  operation,  which  required 
that  there  should  be  persistent  pressure,  or  troops 
sufficient  to  make  the  pressure  when  opportunity  oc- 


THE  HEIGHTS  OF  THE  OURCQ    391 

curred,  along  the  front  all  the  way  from  Soissons  to 
Rheims. 

Our  Twenty-eighth  (the  55th  Brigade),  which 
was  proving  its  worth  by  its  gallantry  and  en- 
durance, now  had  taken  over  a  sector  from  a  French 
division  under  its  own  command,  while  the  Fifty-sixth 
was  fighting  under  the  French,  and  took  La  Motte 
Farm  and  the  village  of  Courmont  on  the  morning 
of  the  28th  and  planned  to  keep  on  across  the  Ourcq. 
It  had  been  raining;  but  this  was  not  such  a  hardship 
in  midsummer,  as  the  men  who  had  no  chance  to  wash 
at  least  had  the  advantage  of  "  feeling  "  water.  No 
midsummer's  rain  is  the  slightest  reason  for  delay- 
ing an  operation  unless  it  stalls  ammunition  trains. 
The  rain  had  made  the  Ourcq,  which  was  easily  ford- 
able  as  a  rule,  a  stream  fifteen  yards  wide  and  three 
feet  deep.  There  was  a  call  for  a  bridge,  which 
the  Twenty-eighth  constructed  out  of  timbers  from 
the  ruins  of  villages,  and  the  next  morning  it  had 
two  battalions  well  established  on  the  other  side  of 
the  "  creek,"  as  the  men  called  it,  and  it  would  be 
considered  nothing  more  than  a  creek  at  home.  The 
bridge  had  been  built  and  the  crossing  made  under 
shell  and  machine-gun  fire  which  was  never  to  cease 
until  the  heights  of  the  Ourcq  were  cleared  of  the 
enemy. 

On  the  29th  another  division,  the  Thirty-second, 
former  National  Guard  from  Michigan  and  Wiscon- 
sin under  Major  General  William  G.  Haan,  which, 
after  service  in  a  quiet  trench  sector,  was  to  have  as 
abrupt  an  entry,  considering  its  previous  preparation, 
into  violent  attack  as  any  division  in  our  army.  Its 
success  was  not  remarkable  in  this  respect  alone. 


392  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

When  It  arrived  in  France  in  the  previous  March, 
it  had  been  made  a  replacement  division,  which  meant 
that  it  was  to  be  occupied  back  of  the  lines  drilling 
replacements  for  other  divisions.  It  sent  over  two 
thousand  men,  including  nine  captains,  as  replace- 
ments to  our  First  Division;  one  regiment  was  en- 
tirely separated  from  the  division  for  a  while;  the 
others  were  sent  to  the  S.  O.  S.  as  labor  troops. 
Wisconsin  and  Michigan  were  not  altogether  happy 
over  the  arrangement,  but,  at  this  time,  before  the 
great  rush  of  troops  from  home,  necessity  required 
that  some  division  should  play  this  part. 

Major  General  Haan  believed  in  his  division, 
and  he  is  a  man  who  persists  in  his  convictions  until 
they  take  form  in  action.  On  April  15th,  when  it 
was  decided  to  make  the  Thirty-second  a  temporary 
combat  division,  one-half  of  the  enlisted  personnel 
remained.  These  were  from  Michigan  and  Wiscon- 
sin. After  four  weeks'  training  the  division  went 
into  the  trenches  in  Alsace,  and  you  began  to  hear 
pleasant  things  about  the  Thirty-second.  At  one 
time  it  was  holding  sixteen  miles  of  front.  Those 
whose  business  it  was  to  know  decided  that  this  tem- 
porary combat  division  was  good  enough  to  help 
reduce  the  swelling  of  the  German  line. 

On  July  19th  the  Thirty-second  was  sent  back  of 
the  Soissons  sector  by  train,  and,  after  two  days' 
waiting  there,  it  was  started  on  a  long  journey  in 
motor  trucks  to  the  Ourcq.  Certainly  if  any  division 
had  won  its  own  way  it  was  the  Thirty-second.  Re- 
placement division?  I  have  heard  men  of  other 
divisions,  including  the  French,  sound  the  praise  of 
the  magnificent  way  in  which  the  Thirty-second  ad- 


THE  HEIGHTS  OF  THE  OURCQ    393 

vanced  down  the  slopes  under  shell  fire,  without  so 
much  as  a  quiver  of  a  break  in  its  precision,  as  it 
came  into  action  on  the  Ourcq.  The  Michigan  and 
Wisconsin  men  still  with  the  division  will  tell  you 
that  they  have  kept  up  its  character — and  no  doubt 
they  have  character.  It  is  a  quiet,  undemonstrative, 
workmanlike  division  in  which  officers  who  have 
automobile  makers  in  their  companies  feel  no  hesi- 
tation in  saying  that  their  commands  are  every  whit 
as  good  as  the  companies  with  a  large  number  of 
lumber-jacks. 

Some  people  thought  two  years  ago  that  Wiscon- 
sin was  pacifist  and  pro-German,  and  that  Iowa  took 
no  interest  in  the  war  or  preparedness.  From  the 
way  that  Wisconsin,  and  the  Iowa  men  of  the  Forty- 
second,  charged  the  heights  of  the  Ourcq,  it  would 
appear  that  when  these  two  States  make  war  it  is  of 
no  pacific  variety.  They  put  conviction  into  their 
blows.  Farmers'  sons  did  not  come  from  the  Middle 
West  to  France  on  a  holiday.  They  had  come  to 
make  the  kind  of  war  that  the  enemy  would  respect. 
As  for  those  supposedly  pro-Germans  from  Mil- 
waukee, they  were  peculiarly  belligerent. 

The  Thirty-second  was  to  take  the  place  of  the 
Third  Division,  which  closed  its  brilliant  service  with 
a  final  burst  of  energy  in  advancing  on  Roncheres 
Wood.  If  ever  a  division  needed  a  respite  from  war 
it  was  the  Third.  Including  that  regiment  which 
held  the  railroad  track  against  the  German  assaults 
on  July  15th,  it  had  kept  on  with  the  pursuit  in  heat 
and  dust  against  stubborn  positions,  with  intervals 
of  a  day  or  two  in  reserve  for  the  different  units, 
as  it  was  not  within  the  endurance  of  any  human 


394  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

beings  to  fight  continuously  for  two  weeks  without 
sleep.  On  this  drive  to  the  Vesle  we  were  to  learn 
how  the  healthy  physical  regime  of  camps  and  drill 
grounds,  with  no  stimulus  except  good  food,  re- 
enforces  youth  with  reserve  strength  that  is  a  bank 
account  for  such  emergencies.  Let  our  youngsters 
drop  from  exhaustion,  and  after  ten  hours'  sleep  they 
were  fresh  again,  which  is  not  true  of  their  elders. 

The  brigade  of  the  Thirty-second  which  took  over 
from  the  Third  began  attacking,  in  conjunction  with 
the  Twenty-eighth,  at  2:  lo  in  the  afternoon  of  the 
30th.  The  Thirty-second,  pressing  on  into  the  Grim- 
pettes  Wood,  was  met  by  machine-gun  fire  from  the 
Cierges  Wood  as  well  as  in  front.  It  attained  a 
large  portion  of  the  Grimpettes  Wood  and  a  footing 
in  the  Cierges  Wood,  which  is  practically  an  offshoot 
of  the  big  Meuniere  Wood.  Elements  of  both  the 
Twenty-eighth  and  the  Thirty-second  reached  the 
edge  of  the  village  of  Cierges,  which  they  found  full 
of  gas.  By  this  time  it  was  known  that  the  Ger- 
mans were  in  exceedingly  strong  force,  including 
fresh  troops  as  well  as  countless  machine  guns  and 
the  batteries  under  cover  of  the  Meuniere  Wood. 
Indeed,  there  was  evidence  that  the  enemy  meant  to 
make  a  definite  stand  on  the  Ourcq. 

We  withdrew  our  advanced  units  while  we  held 
off  a  counter-attack  from  the  Germans  on  the  right. 
That  night  the  Germans  made  a  rush  In  flank  from 
the  depths  of  the  Meuniere  Wood,  which  was  out 
of  our  sector,  against  our  troops  who  were  in  the 
small  Grimpettes  Wood.  The  truth  was  we  were 
ahead  of  the  division  on  our  right  and  exposed.  Our 
men  In  Grimpettes  with  bayonets  fixed,  in  the  sheer 


THE  HEIGHTS  OF  THE  OURCQ    395 

belligerent  relief  of  close  contact  after  facing 
machine-gun  fire,  turned  on  the  Germans,  and,  in  the 
dense  darkness  of  the  woods,  it  was  cold  steel  to  a 
decision.  There  was  little  quarter  given;  there  could 
be  little  quarter  given,  in  such  an  affair  of  darting 
shadows  which  encountered  each  other  in  the  midst 
of  underbrush.  One  man  might  be  disclosed  to  an- 
other at  only  a  pace's  distance;  and  between  two 
men  meeting  it  was  a  question  of  which  made  the 
first  thrust.  The  hot  panting  shouts  of  the  Ameri- 
cans were  mixed  with  the  outcries  of  Germans  and 
with  the  breaking  of  twigs  and  the  straining  breaths 
of  struggle. 

It  was  ugly,  terrible,  primitive,  this  hand-to-hand 
wrestling,  which  lasted  for  half  an  hour  with  our 
men  forcing  the  Germans  back  and  pursuing  them 
as  listeners  knew  by  their  eager  calls,  sometimes  ut- 
tered in  language  which  the  chaplains  would  not 
approve;  for  the  business  of  every  American  was  to 
drive  at  a  German  and  then  another  until  there 
were  no  more  Germans  in  sight  except  many  dead 
and  wounded.  The  German  had  had  a  lesson  in 
night  attacks  against  our  troops  in  the  woods.  His 
forte  is  in  other  weapons  than  the  bayonet;  and,  if 
he  tries  the  bayonet,  he  should  avoid  lumber-jacks 
or  vigorous  young  farmers  from  the  Northwest. 

During  the  night  of  July  30th-3ist,  the  Thirty- 
second  relieved  the  weary  Twenty-eighth,  which  had 
been  marched  and  counter-marched  from  the  other 
side  of  the  Marne,  and  had  fought  in  a  manner  that 
entitled  it  to  rank  now  as  a  veteran  division.  Thus 
the  Thirty-second  and  the  Forty-second  on  the  left 
had  the  field  alone,  and,  by  this  time,  there  was  no 


396  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

discounting  the  nature  of  their  task.  Rising  beyond 
the  village  of  Cierges,  of  slight  tactical  importance 
itself,  flanked  by  the  depth  of  the  Meuniere  Wood, 
are  a  series  of  heights,  with  farm  buildings  that  be- 
came the  ramparts  of  defense,  and  with  ravines  and 
sunken  roads  and  folds  and  swales  and  patches  of 
screening  woods — Pelger  and  Planchette  and  Jom- 
blets — culminating  in  Hill  230,  which  gives  a  view 
west  and  north  and  south  for  many  miles.  Such  a 
position  might  have  been  chosen  for  a  baronial  castle 
by  a  baron  with  numerous  enemies. 

It  is  well  not  to  forget  that  a  machine  gun  has  a 
range  of  over  two  miles.  The  Germans  had  installed 
on  these  heights  at  every  available  point  machine 
guns  which  could  sweep  the  roads  with  long-range 
fire  and  web  with  enfilade  fire  every  step  of  advance. 
These  guns  were  manned  by  the  men  who  were 
there  to  fight  to  the  death,  reenforced  by  artillery 
and  first-class  troops.  The  Forty-second  with  its  line 
bent  toward  the  heights  had  its  right  flank  under  their 
fire;  and  it  had  had  no  cessation  of  fighting  since  it 
reached  the  Ourcq  with  the  4th  Prussian  Guards 
on  its  front.  Its  left  flank  was  just  east  of  Fere-en- 
Tardenois.  German  aeroplanes  had  added  interest 
to  its  situation  by  flying  low  and  raking  the  roads 
with  machine-gun  fire.  It  had  taken  Sergy  and  Sc- 
ringes with  their  machine-gun  nests.  Shall  any  one 
of  the  Forty-second  ever  forget  the  fighting  in  all 
that  neighborhood  where  every  regiment  was  en- 
gaged, New  York,  Ohio,  Iowa  and  Alabama?  Or 
Muercy  farm,  where  our  men  swept  past  enfilade 
machine-gun  fire  through  the  wheat  field  because  that 
was  the  only  thing  to  do?     Major  McKenna,  who 


THE  HEIGHTS  OF  THE  OURCQ    397 

commanded  the  battalion  engaged,  said  that  he  would 
force  the  fighting  and  he  did — and  fell  leading  his 
men. 

It  took  three  days  to  conquer  Muercy  Farm.  We 
gained  it  finally  by  a  rush  through  a  small  woods 
that  ran  close  to  its  walls  after  a  strong  artillery 
preparation.  With  all  its  regiments  across  the 
Ourcq  on  the  27th,  the  Forty-second  was  ahead  of 
schedule  and  while  it  was  employed — with  the  aid 
of  a  battalion  of  the  Fourth  Division  which  had  come 
up  in  reserve — in  cleaning  out  machine-gun  nests  and 
establishing  itself  in  defenses  in  front,  it  also  went 
outside  its  sector  in  charges  against  the  heights  be- 
yond Cierges,  taking  Hill  212,  assaulting  the  Bois 
Pelger  twice  and  mixing  with  the  Thirty-second  in 
the  common  effort  of  striking  at  the  sources  of  its 
casualties.  Who  was  who  at  times  may  have  been 
difficult  to  tell;  but  we  were  all  in  khaki,  all  with 
indomitable  courage  and  natural  aggressiveness, 
striving  to  conquer  the  heights  that  punished  us  with 
machine-gun  fire. 

The  Thirty-second  was  fresh,  and  in  the  impulse 
of  its  first  offensive  effort.  From  the  morning  of 
July  31st  it  was  not  to  stop  driving  against  the 
heights  until  they  were  won.  The  village  of  Cierges 
was  practically  the  center  of  its  line.  This  was 
promptly  occupied,  after  it  was  free  of  gas,  despite 
snipers,  including  one  firing  from  the  church  tower 
from  under  a  Red  Cross  flag.  Beyond  it  was  Belle- 
vue  Farm,  which  the  Germans  had  made  the  same 
kind  of  a  fortress  as  Red  Cross  Farm.  It  stopped 
the  attack  in  front,  but  some  of  our  men,  keeping 
cover  in  the  ravines,  pressed  past  its  enfilade  fire 


398  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

on  up  close  to  the  crowning  height  of  Hill  230,  where 
they  met  machine-gun  fire  from  Reddy  Farm  in 
front,  while  they  had  that  from  Bellevue  Farm  on 
their  left  rear  and  from  the  Meuniere  Wood  on  their 
right  rear.  Hill  230  would  have  to  wait  a  while. 
We  were  not  out  to  commit  suicide,  which  is  the 
invitation  of  the  German  machine  gunners  to  troops 
that  are  too  daring. 

*'  Well,  we  know  where  you  are !  "  as  one  of  the 
men  said,  before  these  advanced  parties  slipped  back 
under  such  cover  as  they  could  find  to  wait  on  the  re- 
duction of  Bellevue  Farm;  and  the  left  flank,  which 
had  charged  and  taken  machine  guns  in  front  in  the 
Jomblets  Wood  to  the  east  of  the  farm,  were  bidden 
to  dig  in  and  hold  on  for  the  same  reason.  Major 
General  Haan  was  pushing  hard — but  he  had  to  con- 
trol the  "  get  there  "  spirit  of  his  soldiers.  He 
brought  up  more  troops,  re-formed  his  line  and  gave 
the  word  to  his  artillery.  Every  hour  of  July  31st 
and  August  ist,  including  the  night,  was  one  fraught 
with  unremitting  activity  under  continuous  fire  for  the 
division.  If  we  had  no  sleep  we  gave  the  German 
machine  gunners  none.  If  they  kept  us  under  fire  we 
kept  them  under  fire.  Bellevue  Farm  was  attacked 
from  both  sides.  Snipers  held  down  the  machine-gun 
fire  while  small  parties  advanced  under  such  cover  as 
they  could  get. 

Our  men  formed  up  in  a  swale  to  move  on  the 
formidable  Planchette  Wood,  and  as  they  came  out 
in  the  open,  there  was  no  faltering  In  face  of  the 
venomous  rattle  that  came  from  the  wood.  They 
went  along  quietly,  smoking  cigarettes.  When  the 
wood  could  not  be  taken  with  direct  assault  we  sent 


THE  HEIGHTS  OF  THE  OURCQ    399 

in  small  groups  of  snipers  to  fight  duels  with  the 
German  gunners.  Everywhere  it  was  a  platoon 
sergeant's  fight,  as  one  of  the  officers  said,  the  fight 
of  the  Red  Indian  scouting  and  creeping,  of  indi- 
vidual groups  meeting  emergencies.  At  night,  we 
had  to  bring  away  our  wounded  quietly,  following 
ravines  and  folds  in  the  ground;  for  at  the  first 
sign  of  movement,  ugly  flashes  would  come  out  of 
the  daricness  speeding  bullets  toward  any  moving 
shadows;  and  overhead  German  aeroplanes  were 
humming  as  they  looked  for  targets  for  their  bombs. 

On  one  of  the  summits  after  the  fighting  was  over 
ten  Americans  were  lying  dead  facing  ten  Germans. 
All  the  Americans  had  their  bayonets  fixed,  and  one 
with  his  bayonet  pointed  toward  the  enemy,  was 
rigid  in  the  very  attitude  of  charging,  his  toe  dug 
in  the  ground  just  as  he  had  fallen  in  the  assault. 
The  ten  had  not  killed  each  other  man  for  man, 
and  the  result  must  have  been  due  to  the  cross  fire 
from  machine-gun  nests.  There  seemed  no  end  of 
machine-gun  positions;  positions  where  the  German 
dead  lay  beside  their  guns;  and  positions  prepared 
already  to  receive  guns  when  they  were  moved. 

Our  unremitting  pressure  had  not  only  broken  the 
resistance,  but  it  had  made  the  Germans  pay  a  bloody 
price.  On  the  night  of  August  ist  we  possessed 
Hill  230  and  Planchette  Wood,  and  our  men  of  the 
Thirty-second,  whose  courage  had  had  its  reward, 
were  eating  German  rations,  which  in  their  hunger 
they  found  excellent;  and  most  particularly  welcome 
were  the  little  bags  of  sugar  which  the  Kaiser  sup- 
plies as  incentive  to  bravery  to  the  men  who  are 
supposed  to  stick  to  their  machine  guns  to  the  death. 


XXXI 

TO  THE  VESLE 

German  defense  gives  way  and  our  pursuit  begins  again — The 
Rainbow  replaced  by  the  Fourth  Division — The  Thirty-second 
Division  takes  Fismes — What  this  fighting  division  did  later 
at  Juvigny — The  Pennsylvania  National  Guard  Division  along 
the  Vesle — The  baptism  of  fire  of  a  "  melting-pot "  division — 
Our  battles  in  the  Marne  salient  proved  the  fighting  quality 
of  American  troops — Our  young  officers — "  Don't  say  Wop !  " — 
Men  who  won  the  crosses — A  month  ahead  of  the  programme. 

August  2nd  was  another  great  day.  On  this  day 
Soissons  was  ours  again,  and  Rheims  made  secure, 
and,  all  the  way  from  Soissons  to  Rheims,  the  map 
marked  a  broad  belt  of  advance  of  the  Allied  troops 
to  the  river  Vesle.  The  chief  of  staff  of  the  Forty- 
second  Division  going  up  at  dawn  to  Bois  Pelger, 
which  his  men  had  attacked  to  save  themselves  from 
its  machine-gun  blasts,  found  that  it  was  deserted. 
Wherever  he  looked  there  was  no  sign  of  the  enemy, 
and  there  was  so  sound  of  machine-gun  fire.  Only 
a  little  artillery  fire  broke  the  silence  after  those  days 
and  nights  of  unceasing  combat.  We  had  cracked 
the  shell  again.     The  Germans  were  going. 

Now,  the  chief  of  staff  of  the  Forty-second  knew 
that  his  freshest  troops  were  his  engineers  who  were 
in  front  at  Nesles.  He  went  to  them  first.  The  men 
whose  business  it  was  to  build  bridges  and  dig 
trenches  and  put  out  barbed  wire  needed  no  urging 
to  stretch  their  legs  in  pursuit.     Then  he  went  on 

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402  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

to  his  regimental  commanders,  whom  he  found  al- 
ready preparing  to  advance.  They  had  realized  the 
situation  at  daybreak,  and  the  men  on  outpost  duty 
had,  too,  when  no  bullets  from  the  enemy  welcomed 
the  dawn.  It  was  as  if  a  saw  tearing  at  wood  had 
suddenly  cut  through. 

The  French,  who  had  been  prompt  to  grasp  the 
situation,  were  ordering  an  attack  along  the  whole 
line;  and  the  Thirty-second  was  already  advancing. 
Its  objective  for  the  day  was  Chamery,  but  it  went 
on  in  -he  joyous  chase  with  the  French  on  its  right 
and  the  Forty-second  on  its  left  until  night  found 
it  at  Drevigny.  The  regiments  in  reserve  were 
brought  up  to  the  front  line  in  order  to  press  for- 
ward the  next  day.  After  some  delay  from  machine- 
gun  fire  on  the  left,  the  advance  became  a  march 
again,  with  the  French  cavalry  patrols  out  in  front 
adding  to  the  interest  of  this  delectable  release  of  a 
maneuver  in  the  open  across  an  undefended  area, 
after  fighting  machine-gun  nests. 

The  weary  Forty-second,  to  whom  pursuit  had 
brought  the  stimulus  of  a  draught  of  champagne,  had 
given  its  reserve  strength  in  its  final  rush  of  retalia- 
tory exhilaration.  It  yielded  its  place  in  line,  when 
it  reached  Chartreves,  to  the  Fourth  Division,  which 
had  been  in  support.  The  Fourth  had  been  passing 
through  the  usual  preparatory  period  of  having  its 
detached  units  engaged  under  other  commands. 
During  the  first  week  of  the  counter-offensive  some 
of  these  had  been  fighting  on  the  western  side  of 
the  salient.  The  Forty-second,  in  common  with  the 
Third,  had  known  the  meaning  of  holding  against 
the  German  offensive.    Major  General  Menoher  had 


TO  THE  VESLE  403 

fought  his  division  in  keeping  with  its  reputation  and 
spirit,  the  rivalry  of  its  units  welded  into  homo- 
geneous divisional  efficiency. 

On  the  night  of  August  3rd,  both  the  Thirty- 
second  and  the  Fourth  looked  down  upon  the  valley 
of  the  Vesle  from  the  southern  heights  and  across 
to  the  northern  heights.  The  plan  was  to  go  on 
until  resistance  developed,  but,  when  the  Thirty- 
second  started  its  advance  the  next  morning,  artillery 
fire  from  the  other  bank  served  prompt  notice  that 
the  Germans  were  there  in  force ;  and  progress  down 
the  slopes  met  with  machine-gun  fire.  Information 
from  prisoners  brought  word  that  the  Germans  had 
well-prepared  positions  across  the  Vesle,  which  was 
not  surprising.  There  was  not  even  a  bow  between 
Rheims  and  Soissons  now.  The  ominous  swelling 
of  the  Marne  salient  had  been  entirely  reduced  by 
the  proper  surgical  operation  for  such  ailments. 

The  Fourth  and  Thirty-second  were  to  have  three 
very  fierce  days  in  the  valley  of  the  Vesle  before  they 
were  firmly  established  on  the  bank,  and  before  the 
Thirty-second  doggedly,  by  repeated  attacks,  had 
fought  its  way  into  the  good-sized  town  of  Fismes, 
which  was  still  held  by  the  Germans  with  machine 
guns  and  snipers,  the  bridge  at  their  back  having 
been  sufficiently  destroyed  to  prevent  wagons  from 
passing,  while  leaving  a  section  which  permitted  men 
to  cross.  Naturally,  the  Germans  had  all  the  ad- 
vantage of  the  situation  at  the  start.  They  had  pre- 
pared defenses,  and  their  artillery  covered  the  slopes 
which  we  must  descend.  When  the  Thirty-second 
had  crowned  its  week's  work  by  entering  Fismes, 
and  it  had  its  outposts  settled  on  the  north  side  of 


404  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  narrow  stream  facing  the  Germans,  it  was  re- 
lieved by  the  Twenty-eighth  Division. 

A  quiet  sector  in  Alsace  had  proved  sufficient  train- 
ing for  such  soldiers  as  those  of  the  Thirty-second 
to  press  the  Issue  with  a  merciless  initiative  against 
the  strongest  positions  machine  gunners  could  well 
occupy.  Now  the  Thirty-second  was  spoken  of  as 
a  combat  division  without  the  addition  of  the  word 
temporary.  After  it  had  rested,  it  was  to  be  sent 
to  as  wicked  fighting  as  modern  warfare  provides 
when  it  was  attached  to  General  Mangin's  army, 
northwest  of  Soissons,  for  the  flanking  movement 
in  the  direction  of  the  Chemin  des  Dames.  There^ 
attacking  through  the  ravines  and  gullies  and  over 
ridges  and  old  trenches  in  this  battle  wrecked  and 
wracked  area,  it  took  a  thousand  prisoners  and  the 
village  of  Juvigny.  Elements  of  its  infantry,  dash- 
ing forward,  were  unconscious  in  their  earnestness 
of  doing  anything  sensational  when  they  shot  down 
the  horses  of  a  German  battery  which  was  just 
limbering  up  for  retreat,  capturing  the  guns  and  the 
gunners  who  had  survived  their  fire.  Their  leader 
was  the  same  officer  who,  upon  coming  to  the  edge 
of  a  ravine,  ran  plump  into  a  German  officer.  He 
held  out  his  hand,  good-naturedly,  and  the  German 
officer  shook  it  and  surrendered  with  all  of  his  men. 
There  is  still  some  resourcefulness  in  the  United 
States  even  if  we  are  out  of  the  pioneering  stage  of 
our  development.  The  Thirty-second  had  losses  in 
keeping  with  its  accomplishment  at  Juvigny;  and, 
after  Juvigny,  it  was  as  entitled  to  be  called  a  vet- 
eran division  as  it  was  to  be  called  a  combat  division. 

On  August  4th,  the  Third  Corps,  under  Major 


TO  THE  VESLE  405 

General  Bullard,  took  command  of  our  troops  in  the 
Vesle  sector  in  order  to  gain  such  experience  as  the 
First  Corps  had  gained  earlier  in  the  Marne  counter- 
offensive.  The  Twenty-eighth  Division  at  last  had 
come  into  its  own  with  Major  General  Muir  in  com- 
mand of  a  divisional  sector.  One  of  his  gallant 
companies  had  charged  across  the  broken  bridge  in 
the  darkness  and  established  itself  in  the  little  village 
of  Fismette  on  the  north  bank.  Isolated  by  day,  well 
entrenched,  it  met  machine-gun  fire  and  sniping  in 
kind;  and,  at  night,  it  received  reliefs  and  food  across 
the  broken  bridge.  For  the  Vesle  was  anything  but 
quiet.  Both  sides  were  extremely  sensitive  to  any 
threatened  attacks,  under  remorseless  nagging  which 
was  quite  as  hard  to  bear  as  bursts  of  machine-gun 
fire  into  a  charge.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  night 
bombing  from  the  Germans  on  our  side;  and  our 
aerodrome  reports  showed  that  there  were  plenty  of 
bombs  being  dropped  on  the  Germans.  Our  own 
artillery,  we  were  sure,  was  giving  full  return  to 
the  German  long-range  shells  which  were  falling  on 
villages  and  roads  as  far  back  as  Drevigny.  It  was 
most  gratifying  to  see  our  motor-drawn  155's  (long) 
moving  into  position,  as  it  was  one  more  sign  of  our 
growing  force. 

The  Seventy-seventh  Division,  National  Army 
from  New  York  City,  which  we  have  seen  training 
at  the  British  front,  whence  it  went  to  Alsace,  was 
brought  to  the  Vesle  to  relieve  the  Fourth  Division. 
It  was  the  first  national  army  division  to  go  into  a 
violent  sector.  Very  different  this  from  the  languid 
shelling  and  the  occasional  trench  raid  and  routine 
patrols  in  Alsace !     The  melting-pot  was  put  to  the 


4o6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

test  of  the  fire  that  crucibles  require — the  old,  old 
test  of  facing  sudden  death,  of  suffering  pain  from 
wounds  and  of  submitting  self  to  superior  orders 
and  to  the  will  of  destiny. 

Indeed,  these  men  of  all  races  and  religions,  who 
had  known  only  city  lodgings  and  city  streets,  were 
having  hardships  quite  as  stiff  as  any  of  the  Pilgrim 
Fathers  who  landed  on  the  poet's  rock-bound  coast, 
down  there  below  the  heights  in  that  hell's  kitchen 
of  the  Chateau  Diable,  fair  mark  for  all  kinds  of 
projectiles,  and  in  their  little  outposts  across  the  river 
and  along  the  railroad  tracks,  and  in  the  woods  and 
ravines  where  they  had  to  wear  their  gas  masks  for 
ten  and  twelve  hours  on  end.  The  approach  by  day 
to  the  valley,  where  they  held  their  ground,  required 
dodging  from  shell  crater  to  shell  crater  against  snip- 
ing rifle  fire.  Many  of  the  soldiers  of  the  Seventy- 
seventh  were  of  the  type  which  the  Kaiser  would  not 
allow  to  stop  over  in  his  country  on  their  way  from 
Russia  to  America.  His  steamship  companies  might 
make  dividends  out  of  carrying  them  in  the  steerage, 
but  he  did  not  want  them  as  residents  of  Germany 
where  he  was  breeding  warriors.  They  were  now 
bound  for  Germany  by  another  route. 

You  could  not  expect  a  little  man  who  had  worked 
in  a  factory  and  lived  in  a  tenement  on  the  East  Side, 
when  his  mother  and  father  had  been  narrow- 
chested  before  him,  to  have  the  physique  of  a  Michi- 
gan lumber-jack  or  an  Iowa  farmer  born  of  genera- 
tions that  had  blown  their  lungs  in  fresh  air.  A 
national  army  company  from  the  villages  and  the 
ranches  is  bound  to  have  more  strength  for  carrying 
up  trench  mortars  to  the  front  line  than  one  from 


TO  THE  VESLE  407 

mean  streets,  although,  under  the  physical  regime  of 
the  army,  some  of  the  East  Siders  had  developed 
from  puniness  to  robustness  in  a  year's  time. 

The  spirit!  Did  they  have  that?  This  was  the 
right  ingredient  for  the  melting-pot  under  machine- 
gun  fire.  They  were  proving  that  they  had  under 
merciless  test;  and  that  they  had  certain  qualities  of 
ready  adaptability  which  go  with  city  life.  The 
stories  about  the  comradeship  formed  between  men 
who  knew  their  morning  baths  and  their  clubs  with 
men  from  the  tenements  are  true.  It  was  "  Buddy  " 
back  and  forth  between  bunkies,  whatever  their 
origin;  they  had  learned  to  appreciate  the  man- 
quality  in  each  other. 

Major  General  Duncan,  commanding  general  of 
the  Seventy-seventh,  who  had  come  across  the  At- 
lantic with  the  First  Division  as  a  colonel,  had 
earned  a  star,  and  then  two  stars,  in  action.  He 
was  a  proper  leader  for  such  men,  with  his  white 
hair  and  ruddy  face,  his  poise,  his  sound  profes- 
sional ability,  his  comprehensive  interest  in  all  who 
served  under  him  and  his  singular  talent  for  develop- 
ing the  best  that  was  in  subordinates.  All  the  army 
was  fond  of  Duncan,  who  had  a  knightliness  of  char- 
acter which  we  like  to  associate  with  soldiers  for  a 
good  cause.  The  Seventy-seventh  was  fortunate  to 
be  under  his  direction  in  a  critical  stage  of  its  experi- 
ence. After  its  long  gruelling  on  the  Vesle,  it  was 
to  have  the  opportunity  for  attack  and  pursuit  when 
the  Germans  retired  from  the  river  and  to  show, 
despite  what  it  had  endured,  an  offensive  spirit  and 
a  suppleness  which  justified  the  faith  of  a  nation 
in  the  melting-pot. 


4o8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

The  entry  of  a  national  army  division  into  the 
sector  while  it  was  still  violent  had  been  a  fitting 
close  to  our  operations  in  the  salient  where  General 
Pershing  had  used  all  his  Immediately  available 
trained  divisions.  Their  conduct  had  justified  his 
faith  in  them,  and  they  had  helped  in  the  action 
which  proved  the  correctness  of  his  opinion  that  the 
salient  would  crack  under  a  determined  attack. 

Another  phase  of  our  army's  preparation  had 
passed.  There  was  no  need  of  any  pessimist  among 
us  standing  any  longer  In  awe  of  the  great  German 
army.  We  had  borne  the  severest  pounding  that  the 
artillery  of  a  German  offensive  could  concentrate ;  we 
had  seen  the  enemy  break  under  our  blows;  we  had 
known  the  supreme  joy  of  pursuit  over  trenches  and 
gun  positions  and  villages  and  through  woods,  which 
had  vomited  their  fire  upon  us,  after  they  were  silent 
and  peaceful  as  the  result  of  our  attacks.  The  Ger- 
man knew  now  that  when  he  met  American  troops 
he  must  expect  unremitting  pressure  at  close  quarters, 
and  we  had  learned  much  by  actual  experience  and 
from  observing  the  French  who  fought  thriftily  at 
our  side. 

Every  time  that  I  went  over  the  enemy's  defensive 
positions  I  marveled  how  we  were  able  to  take  them 
In  face  of  machine-gun  fire.  When  you  are  riding 
along  a  road  consider  that  a  machine  gunner  may  be 
waiting  in  a  bush  for  you  at  the  turn,  or,  when  you 
are  walking  across  a  field,  consider  that  a  machine 
gunner  may  be  waiting  behind  a  hedge  or  in  a  fox 
hole  in  the  tall  grass  or  a  stand  of  wheat,  and  you 
will  have  an  idea  of  the  kind  of  fighting  which  we 
had  all  the  way  from  the  Marne  to  the  Vesle.    Our 


TO  THE  VESLE  409 

instinct,  as  I  have  said,  was  to  charge  the  nests;  to 
close  in  on  them,  which  was  usually  the  best  way  and 
the  quickest  of  conquering  them,  not  to  mention 
the  moral  effect  upon  the  enemy.  The  German  de- 
pended upon  his  machine  gunners  to  stay  us  longer 
than  they  did,  and  this  left  material  in  our  hands 
and  meant  confusion  to  him.  The  French  were  less 
impatient  than  we  were.  Their  veteran  methods, 
the  product  of  racial  qualities  as  well  as  experience, 
were  illuminating. 

"  You  see  some  Frenchmen  in  a  village,"  as  one 
of  our  officers  said,  "  and,  according  to  our  ideas, 
as  they  sit  ahout  munching  bread  and  smoking  ciga- 
rettes, they  don't  seem  to  have  much  system.  The 
next  thing  you  know  they  are  in  the  next  village. 
They've  got  there.  Of  course,  they  know  by  instinct 
the  terrain,  the  roads,  the  villages  of  their  country — 
and  they  are  on  to  Boche  tricks." 

Our  young  officers  from  our  training  camps  at 
home,  many  of  them  only  boys,  brought,  in  face  of 
death,  a  mixture  of  gayety  with  their  serious  effort 
to  apply  all  their  lessons.  With  them  and  their  pla- 
toons and  companies,  who  pressed  close  to  the 
enemy,  rested  the  burden  of  fighting.  It  was  they 
who  directed  the  moves  of  attack  and  the  combat 
columns;  they  who  crawled  up  in  reconnaissance 
when  the  machine  guns  compelled  a  halt;  they  who 
directed  the  cunning  patrols  which  slipped  up  ditches 
or  ravines  or  through  the  woods  in  the  darkness  for 
sudden  onslaught;  they  who  realized  that  they  must 
never  show  fatigue  or  downheartedness. 

With  a  few  exceptions  none  had  known  anything 
of  soldiering  when  we  entered  the  war;  they  had  not 


4IO  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

been  bred  among  soldiers  or  associated  with  soldiers. 
Not  all  were  from  the  officers'  training  camps.  An 
increasing  number  of  privates  were  earning  in  action 
the  privilege  to  go  to  the  officers'  school  in  France 
in  order  to  study  for  commissions.  The  door  of 
promotion  was  open  to  every  officer  and  private  and 
the  cross  was  the  reward  of  courage,  ^slany  paid 
the  price  for  their  gallantry.  Every  one  of  us  in  the 
army  knew  one  of  these,  whose  death  was  a  personal 
blow;  but  it  was  a  greater  blow  to  someone  at  home. 
Mothers  of  these  fine,  clean  young  men  who  fell  in 
action  may  have  a  memory  worth  more  than  that  of 
a  livinfy  son  whose  parents  or  friends  managed  for 
him,  or  he  managed  for  himself,  a  place  at  the  rear 
— which  rarely  happened.  When  men  return  from 
the  war,  ask  them  where  they  served. 

If  there  is  anything  to  take  the  snobbishness  out 
of  one  it  is  the  record  of  those  days  in  the  salient, 
when  nobility  appeared  in  quarters  where  it  is  not 
expected  to  appear  by  those  whose  lives  in  grooves 
separate  them  from  their  fellow-men.  I  have 
avoided  mention  of  individual  instances  of  courage, 
of  cool  initiative,  of  the  wounded  still  fighting,  of 
comradeship's  loyalty  tested  by  danger  of  sacrifice 
and  generous  fearless  impulse,  because  of  their  uni- 
versality. 

"  Don't  say  Wop !  "  as  a  soldier  who  was  of  sev- 
eral American  generations  exclaimed.  "No!  Wop 
don't  go  any  more !  "  an  Irish-American  joined  in. 
"  That's  looking  down  on  them.  We're  looking  up 
to  them,  these  days." 

Those  little  dark-skinned  emigrants  from  Italy 
had  shown  the  character  which  is  the  only  kind  that 


TO  THE  VESLE  411 

interests  you  In  the  man  at  your  side  under  fire.  "  I 
gotta  keep  up,"  as  I  heard  a  little  man,  staggering 
from  fatigue  under  his  pack,  say  one  day,  when 
"  keeping  up  "  meant  that  he  was  moving  into  heavy 
shell  fire.  Again,  "  Sheeny  "  does  not  seem  just  the 
right  word  for  a  Jew  who  charges  a  machine-gun 
nest.  There  is  an  old  idea  that  men  fight  best  in 
the  defense  of  their  homes.  I  am  not  sure  that  they 
do  not  fight  best  for  a  principle  far  from  home.  Did 
any  Czechs,  or  Poles,  or  Greeks  want  to  serve  in  con- 
tingents of  their  own  race?  No.  They  wanted  to 
be  in  the  American  army;  and  they  saw  this  war  as 
an  opportunity  to  show  by  the  blood-test  that  they 
were  Americans. 

Along  with  the  Smiths,  the  Davises,  the  Mac- 
Phersons,  the  O'Briens  who  won  the  crosses,  we 
had,  as  an  example.  Private  Digiacone  who  won  his 
cross  as  one  of  two  surviving  defenders  of  four  men 
who  held  off  a  German  raid;  Corporal  Shumate, 
who,  after  his  platoon  had  been  practically  de- 
stroyed, continued  forward  to  his  objective  and  re- 
mained all  night  under  heavy  fire;  Corporal  Grabin- 
ski,  who  led  his  machine-gun  crew  with  extraordinary 
heroism,  ever  pressing  forward  against  the  enemy 
machine-gun  positions  until  he  was  killed;  Sergeant 
James  Kochensparger,  who  gave  an  example  of  cour- 
age that  was  inspiration  to  the  men  of  his  command; 
Corporal  Gustave  Michalka,  who,  with  two  of  his 
men,  charged  a  machine  gun  which  was  annihilating 
his  platoon,  and  killed  the  operators  and  captured 
the  gun;  Private  Joseph  Isaacs,  who,  although 
wounded  in  the  head,  crawled  from  within  a  hun- 
dred feet  of  the  German  line  back  to  our  line,  a 


412  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

distance  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  yards,  bringing  a 
more  severely  wounded  comrade  on  his  back. 

What  was  it  that  the  Allies  were  saying  late  in 
June  and  early  July?  If  we  could  hold  until 
August  1st,  the  arrival  of  America  troops  would 
make  our  defense  secure.  On  August  ist,  we  had 
conquered  the  heights  of  the  Ourcq  and  were  start- 
ing in  pursuit  of  the  Germans  to  the  Vesle.  Has 
there  ever  been  such  a  transition  of  feeling  as  that 
which  began  on  July  i8th  with  the  drive  to  Soissons? 
Stroke  after  stroke  driving  the  enemy  back !  More 
and  more  prisoners  and  guns !  That  great  German 
army  was  fighting  in  a  muddling  defensive.  Accept- 
ing the  word  of  the  German  Staff  that  the  withdrawal 
was  according  to  plan — why,  then  it  made  a  very 
poor  business  of  the  withdrawal. 

The  thrill  of  entering  Chateau-Thierry  was  only 
one  of  many  during  August  for  the  man  who  had 
followed  the  war  for  four  years,  with  first  place, 
perhaps,  in  seeing  the  cathedral  at  Amiens  practically 
unharmed  and  all  that  deserted  city  beyond  the  range 
of  any  German  guns  which  were  not  in  our  hands, 
and  the  Canadians  and  Australians  and  the  French 
driving  the  Germans  before  them  toward  Peronne 
and  Ham.  Where  were  those  superficial  observers 
who  thought  that  the  British  army  could  not  make 
another  offensive,  and  who  were  asking  in  late  July, 
"  Will  the  British  do  anything?    Can  they?  " 

Our  own  joy  in  taking  positions,  which  had  blazed 
death  into  our  ranks,  could  hardly  be  as  deep  as  the 
joy  of  British  veterans  who  had  regained  fields  which 
they  had  fought  over  again  and  again.  The  spirit 
that  marched  to  the  relief  of  Lucknow  and  stormed 


TO  THE  VESLE  413 

Quebec,  the  "  Up,  Guards,  and  at  'em !  "  spirit,  which 
had  carried  the  English  tongue  over  the  seas  and 
into  the  wilderness  of  new  lands,  was  across  the 
Hindenburg  line.  July  and  August  were  great 
months  for  civilization.  They  saw  old  armies  gal- 
vanized with  fresh  energy;  and  a  new  army  prove 
itself. 


XXXII 


SAINT   MIHIEL 

Our  first  field  army — As  big  as  a  French  group  of  armies — The 
chiefs  of  staff — ^How  big  we  were,  when  the  American  army 
assembled  in  Lorraine — A  mountain  that  we  would  have — 
Characteristics  of  the  famous  Saint  Mihiel  salient — An  eyesore 
to  the  Allies — French  troops  under  American  command — The 
largest  number  of  American  troops  in  one  battle  in  the  history 
of  the  U.  S. — Our  officers  venture  a  trial  of  skill  with  Luden- 
dorff — ^Careful  and  thorough  preparation  for  our  own  battle — 
Moving  up  for  the  attack — A  vast  organization  ready  to  go. 

General  Pershing's  wandering  soldiers  were  com- 
ing home  to  him;  and  they  were  very  glad  to  come. 
Whether  training  in  Flanders  or  in  Artois,  or  fight- 
ing in  Champagne  and  in  Picardy,  they  were  always 
asking  when  they  should  join  their  own  army.  As 
they  might  not  enjoy  the  privilege  of  the  French 
and  British  soldiers  of  going  on  leave  to  their  family 
homes,  Lorraine  became  their  army  home.  They 
wanted  to  be  together  in  one  family  in  their  trans- 
planted United  States  in  France,  with  its  perma- 
nent American  arrangements. 

All  our  divisions,  which  had  assisted  in  reducing 
the  Marne  salient,  were  sent  to  Lorraine,  where 
they  found  themselves  in  a  world  which  was  talking 
in  terms  of  corps  instead  of  divisions.  Our  first 
field  army  had  just  been  organized.  It  was  equiva- 
lent in  size  to  some  French  army  groups,  while  one 
of  our  corps  was  almost  equivalent  to  a  French  army, 

414 


SAINT  MIHIEL  415 

and  one  of  our  divisions  almost  equivalent  to  a 
French  corps,  this  being  another  instance  of  our 
tendency  to  do  things  on  a  big  scale. 

Naturally,  General  Pershing  was  to  command  our 
First  Army  until  he  had  organized  the  Second  Army. 
The  Chief  of  Staff  of  the  First  Army  was  one  of  the 
dreamers  who  sat  at  one  of  the  little  tables  in  our 
first  headquarters  in  the  Rue  de  Constantine  in  Paris 
working  out  the  million  and  two  million  men  project. 
You  will  recollect  that  after  the  project  was  formed, 
he  became  occupied  in  preparing  an  organization  in 
the  full  faith  that  the  millions  must  come  and  would 
come  before  Germany  was  beaten.  Fie  studied  the 
other  armies,  and  he  had  time,  too,  while  waiting 
for  the  millions,  to  do  considerable  thinking,  which 
is  one  of  the  most  important  ingredients  in  making 
plans  for  large  bodies  of  men  in  action.  The  officer 
who  had  been  the  operations  expert  of  the  First  Di- 
vision since  its  arrival  in  France  was  called  to  G.  H. 
Q.  just  before  the  Soissons  drive,  and  he  and  an- 
other officer,  who  had  been  watching  the  operations 
of  all  our  divisions,  began  working  over  maps  and 
plans  for  our  first  army  offensive. 

The  choice  of  the  chiefs  of  staff  sections,  the 
"  G's,"  of  the  First  Army,  formed  as  favorite  a 
theme  of  gossip  in  regular  army  circles  as  that  in 
political  circles  concerning  the  cabinet  "  slate  "  of  a 
President-elect.  This  did  not  particularly  interest 
the  young  second  lieutenants  and  their  doughboys, 
who  knew  that  there  was  some  kind  of  a  managerial 
force  which  issued  orders  while  all  they  had  to  do 
was  to  obey  orders;  yet,  it  was  a  very  deep  concern  to 
them   and  to   their   mothers   and   fathers,   as  upon 


4i6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

these  G's  depended  the  wisdom  of  the  orders  and 
the  consequent  ratio  of  success  to  our  casualties  in 
any  engagement.  The  big  G's  of  the  General  Staff 
had  long  been  training  officers  in  the  different 
branches  and  trying  them  out  in  the  older  divisions, 
with  a  view  to  selecting  those  most  fit  for  binding 
our  scattered  divisions  together  in  an  army  under 
our  own  responsible  command. 

A  chief  of  artillery,  Major  General  Ernest  Hinds, 
had  been  appointed  in  the  early  summer,  and  he  had 
set  about  organizing  his  staff  before  he  had  much 
artillery,  which  was,  of  course,  in  keeping  with  Gen- 
eral Pershing's  prevision  in  making  ready  to  direct 
the  use  of  material  without  loss  of  time  when  it 
arrived.  All  our  guns  were  moving  toward  the 
Saint  Mihiel  sector,  and  all  our  aeroplanes,  and  all 
the  tanks  of  the  tank  corps  which  had  been  months 
in  drilling.  All  energy,  all  thought  seemed  to  be 
directed  toward  Saint  Mihiel.  Yet,  no  one  who  went 
there  said  where  he  was  going,  and  no  one  who  re- 
turned from  there  said  that  he  had  seen  anything 
unusual.  We  were  having  our  first  lesson  in  mili- 
tary secrecy. 

On  the  way  to  Toul  from  G.  H.  Q.  you  rode  for 
hours  through  villages  where  you  saw  only  American 
troops.  Our  original  training  area  had  been  ex- 
panded over  a  vast  region.  The  veteran  divisions 
from  the  Marne  salient,  with  the  gaps  in  their  ranks 
filled  by  replacements,  were  resting,  according  to  the 
prescribed  regime,  which  did  not  mean  sitting  in  the 
doorway  of  their  billets  all  day.  They  were  drilling 
again  and  making  ready  for  the  part  which  the  or- 
ganizers of  the  First  Army  and  of  the  different 


SAINT  MIHIEL  417 

corps  were  preparing  for  them.  These  old  di- 
visions had  lost  many  of  their  staff  officers,  and 
regiments  and  battalions  had  lost  their  commanders, 
who  had  gone  to  higher  responsibilities  in  other  or- 
ganizations. 

When  officers  met  in  the  family  reunion  before  Saint 
Mihiel  they  were  almost  too  busy  to  exchange  mutual 
congratulations  upon  their  most  recent  promotions. 
Besides,  promotions  had  lost  their  novelty.  The 
mighty  undertaking  overwhelmed  every  other  con- 
sideration. The  real  thrill  was  in  the  impressive 
assembling  of  men  and  material.  One  was  reminded 
of  the  remark  of  Mr.  Smith  who  attended  the  Smith 
family  reunion.  "  I  knew  that  there  were  a  lot  of 
Smiths,"  he  said,  "  but  I  did  not  realize  how  many 
until  I  saw  them  together." 

Divisions  and  their  transport,  with  their  guns, 
ambulances,  motor  trucks,  wagons,  which  had  been 
streams  in  the  French  army,  were  flowing  in  a  com- 
mon reservoir.  The  mighty  throbbing  impulse  of 
the  Service  of  Supply  was  felt  running  along  the  rail- 
roads from  the  ports  to  the  railheads  and  on  up  to 
the  front  wherever  a  cartridge  was  fired  or  a  soldier 
ate  a  piece  of  hard  bread.  Had  we  really  grown 
this  great?  Had  the  Allied  shipping  been  able  to 
bring  all  this  force,  human,  mechanical  and  material, 
across  the  Atlantic  in  face  of  the  submarine?  This 
and  more.  We  still  had  divisions  with  the  British 
and  the  French,  divisions  in  sectors  in  Alsace  and  in 
training  and  en  route  from  the  ports. 

The  intensity  of  the  night  before  our  first  entry 
into  the  trenches,  of  the  night  before  our  offensive  at 
Cantigny,  of  the  night  before  the  drive  to  Soissons, 


41 8  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

was  now  that  of  an  army.  Immense  numbers  of  men 
and  guns  alone  would  not  bring  success.  We  must 
have  an  organization  equal  to  our  undertaking.  Gen- 
eral Pershing  had  expressed  the  character  of  the 
undertaking  one  day,  in  the  previous  March,  when 
he  was  looking  up  at  Mont  Sec,  which  looked  down 
with  such  lofty  patronage  on  our  men  in  their  miry 
trenches  in  the  lowlands.  "  We  ought  to  have  that 
mountain,"  he  said.  Indeed,  he  had  long  ago  made 
up  his  mind  that  he  would  have  it.  As  far  back  as 
July,  19 17,  he  had  planned  that  the  first  offensive 
of  the  American  army  when  it  became  an  integral 
force  should  be  against  the  Saint  Mihiel  salient. 

In  the  early  days  of  the  war  that  triangular  dag- 
ger-like indentation  in  the  Allied  battle  line  irritated 
everyone  who  glanced  at  a  map  of  the  Western 
front.  It  seemed  to  be  a  military  anachronism  which 
could  not  long  endure.  In  19 15  the  French  made 
an  attempt  at  its  reduction,  but  finding  the  resistance 
very  formidable  in  a  period  when  France  had  to  con- 
serve her  man-power,  the  attack  was  not  pressed  to 
a  decisio  1.  Thereafter  the  salient  became  an  ac- 
cepted part  of  the  line  no  more  incomprehensible 
to  the  layman  than  many  other  features  of  the  war, 
but  a  fact. 

The  salient  is  broader  than  it  looks  on  the 
map,  which  does  not  reveal  the  heights  which  form 
its  walls.  Five  minutes'  observation  from  Liou- 
ville,  one  of  the  forts  of  Toul,  gives  you  an  apprecia- 
tion of  the  character  which  even  larger  scale  maps 
cannot  contribute  with  equivalent  force.  Looking 
north  and  northeast  are  a  series  of  ridges  and  high 
hills.     The  most  conspicuous  of  these  is  the  camel's 


SAINT  MIHIEL  419 

hump  of  Mont  Sec,  and  looking  east,  at  their  base, 
is  a  stretch  of  level  country  broken  by  the  whitish 
patches  of  the  ruins  of  villages  and  the  sheen  of  small 
lakes  and  ponds  and  by  clumps  of  woods.  The  Ger- 
mans had  held  the  high  ground;  the  French  had  held 
the  low.  Eastward,  although  out  of  sight,  is  Pont- 
a-Mousson  on  the  Moselle  river,  in  Allied  posses- 
sion, which  was  often  mentioned  early  in  the  war. 
From  high  ground  in  that  neighborhood  the  city 
and  fortress  of  Metz  are  visible. 

The  town  of  Saint  Mihiel  itself  is  at  a  junction 
of  roads  and  in  the  bend  of  the  Meuse  river  which 
forms  the  point  of  the  salient;  and  the  Meuse  runs 
on  through  Verdun,  which  is  protected  by  the  hills 
crowned  by  the  forts  whose  mastery  Germany  sought 
in  her  onslaught  in  the  spring  of  19 16.  From  Doua- 
mont  and  Vaux  you  look  out  over  the  plains  of  the 
Woevre.  Thus,  the  chain  of  French  fortresses  face 
Metz  and  the  hills  of  German  Lorraine  across  an 
intervening  space  on  French  territory  which  must  be 
crossed  before  either  adversary  approaches  the  per- 
manent defenses  of  the  other.  Academic  military 
casuists  may  enjoy  themselves  in  the  future  in  pon- 
dering on  whether  or  not  the  German  should  not 
have  concentrated  on  Verdun  and  Toul  and  the 
eastern  frontier  of  France  instead  of  going  through 
Belgium.  In  that  event,  perhaps  America  would 
not  have  been  in  the  war,  and  our  interest  in  the 
salient  would  not  be  associated  with  the  largest  force 
that  had  participated,  up  to  that  time,  in  a  single 
action  in  all  our  history. 

In  September,  19 14,  when  the  Germans  were 
stopped  in  the  battle  of  Lorraine  on  their  left  flank, 


420  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

before  Toul  and  Verdun  and  in  the  Argonne  In  their 
center,  and  by  the  battle  of  the  Marne  on  their  right, 
they  fastened  upon  the  natural  ramparts,  which  form 
the  Saint  Mihiel,  and  held  fast,  having  regard  not  for 
lines  on  flat  maps  but  those  on  relief  maps.  The  sali- 
ent enabled  them  to  break  the  railroad  line  from  Ver- 
dun to  Commercy,  Toul  and  Nancy;  it  supported  any 
movement  against  Verdun;  it  was  a  threat  in  flank  of 
any  French  offensive  toward  Lorraine,  thus  assisting 
in  confining  active  operations  to  the  line  from  Verdun 
to  Flanders;  and,  finally,  it  placed  German  trenches 
in  commanding  positions  which,  despite  the  wedge 
form  of  the  line,  meant  that  the  drain  of  casualties 
day  by  day  ought  to  be  in  the  German  favor. 

General  Pershing's  plan  of  striking  at  the  bases  of 
the  salient  was  simple,  as  the  plans  of  all  great  opera- 
tions are.  Its  distinction  was  in  the  boldness  of  the 
stroke  by  a  new  army,  which  some  military  leaders 
considered  absolute  folly.  Under  the  observation  of 
Mont  Sec  and  other  hills,  we  should  have  to  storm 
strong  defenses  through  three  or  four  lines  of  barbed 
wire  before  we  came  into  open  country.  We  might 
break  through  the  first  line,  we  were  told,  but,  even 
if  we  succeeded  in  taking  the  second,  the  third  would 
stop  us;  or,  if  we  broke  through  the  third  we  should 
find  ourselves  under  the  fire  of  German  batteries 
directed  from  Mont  Sec,  while  the  terrain  beyond 
the  regular  defenses  favored  machine-gun  nests. 
Our  losses  would  be  staggering,  even  if  we  forced 
the  evacuation  of  the  salient. 

We  were  to  have  the  assistance  of  French  artillery, 
aeroplanes  and  tanks,  which  were  to  serve  under  the 
direction  of  our  own  chiefs  of  artillery,  aviation  and 


SAINT  MiHIEL  421 

our  tank  service.  The  responsibility  was  ours;  the 
whole  operation,  including  all  the  French  troops  in 
line,  was  under  command  of  General  Pershing.  With 
the  repeated  Allied  blows  in  the  offensive  draining 
German  reserves,  the  German  Staff,  facing  the  pos- 
sibility of  having  to  shorten  its  line  on  the  Western 
front,  might  not  be  expected  to  send  in  many  divisions 
to  make  a  desperate  struggle  to  hold  the  salient. 
Yet,  the  fifty  thousand  German  troops  within  the 
salient  were  a  formidable  force,  if  they  were  to  make 
stubborn  use  of  their  defenses. 

Two  American  divisions,  side  by  side,  were  the 
most  that  we  had  ever  had  under  American  com- 
mand in  an  active  battle  sector.  Practically,  all  our 
fighting  had  been  by  divisions;  and  our  divisions, 
with  two  exceptions  in  the  Marne  salient,  had  been 
alternated  with  French  divisions.  Our  First  and 
Third  Corps,  in  their  brief  experiences  in  the  Marne 
salient,  had  been  under  a  French  army  commander. 
Now,  the  situation  was  reversed;  now,  we  were  di- 
recting French  troops  instead  of  having  our  troops 
directed  by  French  generals;  now,  we  had  eight 
American  divisions  in  line  under  our  corps  and  army 
command  in  an  operation  more  difficult  than  that  of  a 
straight  frontal  attack. 

Our  pp.per  organization  had  expanded  with  a 
healthy  deliberation;  but  the  troops  which  filled  out 
the  forms  of  organization  in  living  practice  had  ar- 
rived in  a  flood.  Many  units,  especially  those  which 
form  the  links  of  organization,  had  had  no  real  bat- 
tle experience  as  units,  let  alone  in  coordination  with 
other  units.  Their  assembling  into  a  whole  was  of 
itself  a  problem;  the  operation  against  the  salient, 


422  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

simply  as  a  tactical  maneuver,  was  a  serious  enter- 
prise for  a  young  army.  We  ought  to  have  had  more 
time  for  preparation;  but,  with  winter  approaching, 
when  the  Allies  wished  to  make  the  most  of  the  head- 
way which  their  offensives  had  gained,  time  was  very 
valuable.  Divisions  must  not  be  kept  idle.  There 
must  be  action. 

We  had  a  new  phrase  in  our  army  lexicon,  "  Ad- 
vanced G.  H.  Q.,"  which  followed  General  Pershing 
to  the  First  Army.  Where  the  chiefs  of  the  big 
G's  were  formerly  dealing  with  the  details  of  di- 
visions they  were  now  saying,  "  That  is  an  army 
matter."  Those  at  army  headquarters  were  say- 
ing, "  That  is  a  corps  matter  " ;  and  those  at  corps 
headquarters  were  saying,  "  That  is  a  division  mat- 
ter." There  are  certain  defined  methods  of  organi- 
zation for  large  armies  which  are  the  result  of  the 
accumulated  experience  of  previous  wars  and  par- 
ticularly of  this  war.  We  followed  them.  We  might 
consider,  too,  that  the  principle  of  throwing  two 
hundred  thousand  men  against  a  salient  is  the  same 
as  throwing  a  thousand. 

The  main  thing  was  for  no  one  to  become  hectic 
under  the  pressure  of  responsibility,  but  to  take  it 
calmly.  You  would  have  thought  that  the  Staff  of  the 
Army  and  the  staffs  of  the  corps  had  been  directing 
immense  operations  all  their  lives.  As  they  had  been 
looking  forward  for  a  year  to  this  army  being 
formed,  and  gradually  preparing  for  it,  the  fulfill- 
ment of  anticipation  hardly  came  as  a  surprise.  One 
by  one  we  had  risen  to  occasions.  We  must  rise  to 
this,  which  is  not  saying,  however  cool  every  officer 
appeared,  that,  in  the  back  of  his  head,  there  was 


SAINT  MIHIEL  423 

not  a  good  deal  of  apprehension  which  was  the 
proper  corrective  for  optimism.  If  we  failed,  many- 
critics  would  be  justified  in  their  declaration  that 
it  was  impossible  for  us  to  form  an  army  staff  which 
could  efficiently  direct  a  great  army. 

The  arguments  and  the  pressure  had  been  strong 
for  us  to  place  all  our  divisions  under  the  direction 
of  the  Allied  commanders  to  use  as  if  they  were 
French  and  British  divisions,  particularly  at  a  time 
when  every  division  counted  in  pressing  the  offen- 
sive against  the  weakening  Germans.  Why  should 
these  old  European  staffs  believe  us  capable? 
Looked  at  in  one  sense,  there  was  a  magnificent 
audacity,  on  the  part  of  the  graduates  from  Leaven- 
worth, in  thinking  that  they  might  successfully  direct 
a  new  army  of  assembled  divisions,  which  had  never 
acted  together,  against  the  German  Staff,  which  was 
directing  forces  coordinated  by  generations  of  train- 
ing and  preparation  and  by  four  years  of  war.  The 
chief  of  operations  of  our  G.  H.  Q.,  who  had  never 
maneuvered  ten  thousand  men  except  on  paper,  be- 
fore this  war,  was  daring  to  meet  Ludendorff  on  the 
chessboard  of  war;  and  he  was  not  more  overawed 
than  the  generals  of  the  democratic  army  of  the 
French  Revolution  were  by  the  enormous  prestige  of 
the  Austrian  staffs. 

Another  argument  in  favor  of  infiltrating  our  di- 
visions into  other  armies  was  the  inspiriting  effect 
of  the  association  upon  Allied  divisions,  although 
this  seemed  to  be  rather  labored,  considering  the  way 
that  the  Allied  divisions  fought  in  France  and  in  the 
Balkans  and  in  Turkey  in  September.  The  supreme 
argument  against  infiltration  was  the  one  which  I 


424  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

have  mentioned  at  the  outset  of  this  chapter.  Our 
soldiers  wanted  to  be  with  their  own  army;  they 
wanted  to  be  under  their  own  general.  An  army  is 
supposed  to  be  a  pure  autocracy  where  men  obey 
orders  and  keep  their  opinions  to  themselves.  So  it 
is,  and  yet  without  any  balloting  system,  it  expresses 
itself  in  the  irresistible  silent  note  of  its  spirit;  and 
the  sentiment  of  our  soldiers  required  an  integral 
force. 

General  Pershing  had  certainly  not  been  timid  in 
his  choice  of  a  test  as  to  whether  or  not,  after  a 
year's  study  of  the  Allied  staffs,  we  were  capable  of 
directing  an  army.  We  had  the  advantage  of  not 
becoming  careless  through  staleness  or  through  the 
conviction  which  goes  with  the  confidence  of  experi- 
ence and  long  traditions.  The  graduates  of  all  the 
schools  in  France  which  Major  General  McAndrew 
had  organized,  with  their  stiff  curriculums  in  every 
branch  of  staff  work  and  command,  were  now  com- 
ing into  their  own.  Without  the  schools  we  should 
have  had  only  a  handful  of  men  who  knew  anything 
about  large  organization.  Could  they  apply  their 
theories  in  practice?  Was  what  they  had  learned 
only  theory?  Hardly.  They  had  taken  their  les- 
sons from  notably  efficient  officers  fresh  from  the 
front. 

Responsibility  of  a  new  and  terrible  kind,  ambi- 
tion, patriotism  and  the  magnetic  influence  of  being 
a  part  of  immense  forces,  all  gave  impetus  to  our 
industry.  We  were  bound  to  neglect  no  details  in 
the  book.  Any  shortcomings  would  not  be  due  to 
negligence.  Every  young  lieutenant  who  played  er- 
rand boy  for  a  colonel;  every  reserve  officer  who 


SAINT  MIHIEL  425 

directed  traffic  at  a  railhead  or  an  ambulance  section, 
as  well  as  reserve  officers  who  had  been  to  the 
schools;  every  engineer,  military  policeman,  surgeon, 
sanitary  corps  man,  aviator  and  balloonist,  was  try- 
ing to  keep  everything  he  ought  to  do  in  mind  and  to 
do  it  exactly  according  to  directions.  Sometimes  the 
directions  were  confusing;  sometimes  they  did  not 
work  out.  When  they  did  not  initiative  came  into 
play.  Sleep  did  not  matter;  nothing  mattered  except 
to  perform  your  own  little  part  as  an  atomic  cog 
of  the  First  American  Army  which  was  about  to  go 
into  action. 

The  troops  should  not  want  for  any  assistance  re- 
source could  provide.  Our  map  printing  establish- 
ment had  maps  In  prodigal  abundance  for  the  officers 
who  were  to  lead  their  men  over  the  top.  Each 
platoon's  part  was  carefully  prescribed;  each  com- 
pany's, each  battalion's,  and  so  on  up  through  the 
corps  in  studious  detail.  Everyone  in  his  objective 
earnestness  became  subjective  in  the  fear  that  he 
might  be  responsible  for  some  vital  mistake.  Our 
casualties  might  be  enormous.  What  if  we  had  not 
enough  ambulances?  The  Red  Cross  as  well  as  the 
regular  medical  establishment  was  very  intense. 
What  if  we  should  run  short  of  ammunition?  If  the 
engineers  failed  to  make  roads  for  the  artillery?  If 
the  aeroplanes  failed  in  their  part?  If  the  tanks 
did  not  come  up  to  expectations? 

The  stage  was  being  set  for  an  immense  spec- 
tacle. Guns  by  the  hundred,  yes  by  the  thousands, 
of  all  calibers,  each  had  to  go  to  its  place,  and  its 
part  assigned.  They  must  not  be  seen  moving  on  the 
roads  by  day.     No   great  concentration   of  traffic 


426  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

should  be  visible.  Traffic  casualties  in  motor  trucks 
that  had  run  off  the  roads  into  ditches  were  morning 
signs  of  the  difficulty  of  working  in  the  dark.  The 
infantry,  which  were  to  go  over  the  top,  waited,  of 
course,  upon  the  setting  of  the  stage  and  the  form- 
ing up  of  all  the  supers,  before  they  came  on  the 
scene  massed  in  the  darkness  for  the  attack.  The 
roads  were  theirs — they  were  masters  of  the  world 
— as  they  left  the  cover  of  woods  and  villages,  and 
in  their  shadowy  columns  with  their  steady  tread, 
expressive  of  man-force  in  its  organized,  one- 
minded  purpose,  moving  toward  the  front.  The 
sight  of  them  deepened  everyone's  sense  of  respon- 
sibility in  his  work  with  the  thought  of  what  the 
morrow  might  bring  forth  for  them. 

Aside  from  the  old  divisions,  the  First,  the  Sec- 
ond and  ti^-e  Forty-second,  we  were  to  have  in  the 
attack  a  new  regular  division,  the  Fifth,  and  the 
Eighty-ninth  and  Ninetieth  National  Army  divi- 
sions, with  the  Eighty-second,  another  National 
Army  division  which  was  to  mark  time  at  Pont-a- 
Mousson.  The  Twenty-sixth  Division  was  by  itself 
on  the  other  side  of  the  salient  acting  with  French 
Colonials  for  a  short  objective.  Our  main  thrust 
was  to  be  from  the  southern  side  of  the  salient 
toward  the  town  of  Vigneulles-les-Hattonchattel, 
which  lay  midway  on  a  line  from  the  two  sides  which 
would  eliminate  the  salient.  The  attack  was  set  for 
5  :  30  on  the  morning  of  September  12th.  When  it 
began  raining  on  the  previous  day,  this  was  a  poor 
augury  with  its  promise  of  roads  turned  into  mires. 
The  Germans  thought  that  we  would  call  off  the  at- 
tack because  of  the  rain;  but  General  Pershing  had 


SAINT  MIHIEL  427 

no  such  thought.  The  result,  with  its  surprise,  was 
better  perhaps  than  if  we  had  had  dry  weather. 

We  were  ready,  on  the  night  of  the  nth,  in  all 
that  plans  and  orders  could  accomplish,  with  noth- 
ing further  to  do  except  to  await  results.  Those  at 
corps  and  army  headquarters  who  had  made  the 
plans  might  sleep  while  they  had  the  opportunity. 
Work  would  begin  again  when  they  had  the  reports 
from  the  field  and  had  to  deal  with  the  situation 
which  these  should  develop. 

That  waiting  force  of  men,  guns,  transport  sug- 
gested some  mighty  mechanical  vertebrate  whose 
parts  had  been  assembled  for  its  first  effort  in  loco- 
motion. We  knew  that  we  could  depend  upon  it  to 
"go."  The  spirit  of  the  troops  assured  this;  but 
whether  or  not  it  would  keep  to  the  road  or  founder 
for  lack  of  proper  articulation,  only  the  action  could 
reveal. 


XXXIII 


WE  TAKE  THE  SALIENT 

A  thunderstorm  of  artillery  breaks  loose — Over  the  top  at  5:35 — 
Vagaries  of  tanks — A  world  all  American — Roads  clogged  by 
astounding  mass  of  transport — German  prisoners — The  di- 
vision from  Missouri  and  Kansas — "  Like  taking  candy  from 
children  " — Germans  surrender  in  crowds — The  salient  blotted 
out — Fifteen  thousand  prisoners  and  !J2;ht  casualties — An 
operation  that  worked  out  as  planned — Belgians  liberated — 
The  gratitude  of  the  French — General  Pershing  not  unhappy. 

A  RIDE  through  the  night  brought  me,  before  dawn, 
to  the  top  of  a  commanding  hill  overlooking  the  Toul 
sector  in  time  for  the  artillery  preparation  for 
the  Saint  Mihiel  attack,  when  all  the  guns, 
which  had  been  nursed  so  solicitously  into  position, 
broke  the  clammy  silence  with  their  unorchestrated 
voices,  and  a  man-made  aurora-borealis  shot  out  of 
the  wall  of  darkness.  What  does  one  really  see  when 
an  avalanche  of  sound  and  of  shells  is  suddenly  re- 
leased in  a  bombardment?  As  much  as  one  sees  of 
an  electric  storm  without  being  behind  the  clouds 
where  the  storm  is  made.  There  were  darts  of  flame 
in  the  foreground  from  nearby  batteries,  while  the 
leaping,  continuous  flashes  ran  on  clear  to  Pont-a- 
Mousson.  All  the  world,  inclosed  under  canopy  of 
night,  was  aflame.  Piercing  tongues  of  lightning  and 
broad  flashes  of  lightning!  Little  lightnings  of  the 
75's  lost  in  the  mighty  lightnings  of  the  big  calibers ! 
It  was  our  challenge  as  an  army  to  the  enemy. 
428 


430  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

The  labors  and  sacrifices  of  the  people  at  home  were 
concentrated  in  this  inferno  of  accumulated  prepara- 
tion. Our  guns  were  speaking  the  power  of  the  Mis- 
sissfppi's  flow;  of  the  heat  of  the  deserts;  of  the  coal 
and  metals  from  our  mines;  of  the  throbbing  life  of 
our  cities  and  towns  and  the  long  lines  of  railroad 
track  from  coast  to  coast;  of  the  cotton  fields  and 
wheat  fields — to  support  the  flesh  and  blood  of  our 
men  waiting  in  the  front-line  trenches  to  commence 
our  first  attack  as  an  army.  It  was  the  thought  of 
our  men  which  made  you  pray  that  all  the  shells 
screaming  over  their  heads  would  go  straight  to  their 
targets;  it  was  the  thought  of  them  that  stilled  the 
pulse  in  suspense. 

The  minutes  pass  as  the  lightnings  continue  their 
terrific  witchery.  It  is  five-thirty-five.  The  men 
have  gone  over  the  top.  Moist  and  slow-breaking 
dawn  revealed  dark  patches  as  woods,  and  white 
«!<-reaks  became  roads  in  the  developing  outline  of 
landscape,  while  Mont  Sec  loomed  out  of  the  dis- 
tance across  the  valley  as  a  promontory  looms  out 
of  the  mist  at  sea. 

There  was  little  answering  German  shell  fire,  so 
far  as  you  could  see.  If  the  German  artillery  were 
active  it  was  directed  against  our  infantry  which  was 
out  of  sight.  How  was  the  battle  going?  Were  we 
advancing  in  unbroken  success,  or  were  we  struggling 
against  barrages  and  machine-gun  nests?  Curiosity 
as  to  the  result  overwhelmed  all  other  considerations. 
Corps  headquarters  would  begin  to  have  definite 
news  of  first  results  by  eight  o'clock. 

At  the  Fourth  Corps,  in  command  of  Major  Gen- 
eral Dickman,  who  had  led  the  Third  Division  in  its 


WE  TAKE  THE  SALIENT  431 

brilliant  work  on  the  Marne,  one  learned  that  we 
were  everywhere  through  the  first-line  defenses  and 
advancing.  There  were  no  details  in  the  brief  re- 
ports which  had  been  received.  Military  reports  are 
not  literary.  All  the  corps  wished  to  know,  and  this 
very  definitely,  was  about  the  progress  of  each  one 
in  the  chain  of  divisions  on  the  corps  front,  and,  if 
any  one  were  held  up,  the  nature  of  the  opposition, 
in  order  to  direct  the  action  of  the  others.  Although 
all  information  thus  far  indicated  complete  success, 
it  was  not  the  business  of  the  Commanding  General 
or  the  Chief  of  Staff,  reading  the  message  slips,  to 
form  any  conclusions  other  than  those  vouchsafed  by 
the  facts.  Affairs  in  the  midst  of  the  Corps'  first 
battle  seemed  to  be  proceeding  as  smoothly  as  in 
any  well-regulated  business  ofllice  in  an  active  period. 

The  wireless  outside  corps  headquarters  was 
bringing  news;  the  telegraph  keys  and  the  telephone 
were  bringing  more  news  over  the  wires;  the  aero- 
planes were  dropping  message  cylinders.  Every- 
thing was  quite  according  to  the  routine  of  a  veteran 
corps,  French  or  British.  You  had  more  bits  of 
information  from  officers  who  came  in  to  report. 
One  concerned  the  tanks,  which  had  been  having  a 
characteristically  merry  time.  A  few  had  been  stuck 
in  crossing  No  Man's  Land;  a  few  always  are.  The 
tank  is  a  temperamental  beast  which  has  been  slowly 
trained  to  routine;  but  he  is  a  fiery  dragon  of  wrath 
when  loosed  in  the  enemy's  country.  Tanks  had 
been  seen  trundling  about  ahead  of  the  infantry 
across  roads,  fields,  trenches,  ditches,  looking  for 
machine-gun  nests  which  they  might  devour. 

But  corps   headquarters   was   well   back   of  the 


432  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

front,  in  a  stone-walled  mausoleum,  as  one  officer 
called  it,  built  from  a  quarry,  where  its  processes 
would  not  be  interrupted  by  the  enemy's  fire;  and, 
now  that  your  human  curiosity  was  satisfied,  the 
thing  to  do  was  to  follow  the  troops.  You  rode 
forward  into  a  world  whose  existence  was  no  longer 
a  military  secret.  From  the  moment  that  the  artil- 
lery had  loosed  its  thunders  men  need  no  longer  deny 
any  knowledge  of  the  reason  of  their  presence,  or 
of  that  of  the  mobilized  material  for  the  offensive. 

All  the  transports,  which  had  been  moving  by 
night,  now  moved  forward  by  day,  as  the  Germans 
were  by  this  time  quite  aware  of  the  fact  that  we 
were  attacking  the  salient.  A  casual  visitor  who  had 
been  to  other  fronts  might  take  all  this  traffic  for 
granted  as  reflective  of  the  size  of  our  nation.  He 
lacked  the  early  days  of  our  expedition  for  his 
standard  of  comparison.  It  was  in  this  same  region 
where  we  had  been  given  our  first  divisional  sector. 
There  was  something  enormously  impressive  in  the 
revelation  of  growth  as  all  the  wheels  that  carried 
supplies  for  guns  and  men  began  turning. 

No  French  blue  ran  through  this  world  except 
occasional  French  officers  in  a  car  or  a  truck  which 
was  serving  French  batteries,  tanks  or  aerodromes. 
Otherwise,  it  was  all  khaki  and  American,  with  the 
attentive  military  police  at  the  turns,  the  signs  in 
English  warning  against  "  double-banking  "  and  an- 
nouncing a  "  one-way  road."  It  was  American  in 
the  big  ammunition  trucks  and  the  dispatch  riders 
and  all  the  detail  of  a  great  army  in  being.  Look 
across  country  and  every  road  was  a  solid  line  of 
American  transport,   halting  and  surging   forward 


WE  TAKE  THE  SALIENT  433 

and  halting,  in  the  effort  to  reach  the  infantry.  The 
whole  region  from  Pont-a-Mousson  to  Beaumont  was 
webbed  and  plotted  with  activity.  We  had  not 
enough  horses,  not  enough  motor  truclcs,  not  enough 
of  anything,  of  course;  but  the  amount  we  did  have 
was  astounding  in  its  leviathan  pressure  toward  the 
front. 

An  automobile  with  the  articulation  of  an  eel 
would  be  a  welcome  innovation  in  threading  such 
traffic.  It  was  a  triumph  of  locomotion  to  reach  a 
division  headquarters,  which  was  that  of  Major 
General  Wright,  of  the  Eighty-ninth,  where  the  scene 
was  very  different  from  the  quiet  corps  head- 
quarters. In  the  drizzling  rain,  a  line  of  German 
prisoners  was  being  interrogated  before  being 
marched  to  the  rear.  Another  group  awaited  their 
turn  in  the  field;  some  others  had  been  set  to  work. 
Automobiles,  side-cars  and  motor  cycles  were  parked 
in  the  mud  in  front  of  the  dugout  occupied  by  the 
division  commander.  Officers  who  came  in  to  report, 
as  one  said,  did  not  take  much  interest  in  the  news 
that  the  Cubs  had  lost  a  game  in  the  world's  series,  in 
view  of  the  preoccupation  of  the  Saint  Mihiel  series. 
They  showed  more  emotion  than  the  General  and  his 
staff,  who  were  crowded  in  a  gloomy  recess,  their 
delight  that  of  the  intensity  of  the  hound  in  pursuit, 
as  they  aimed  to  keep  touch  with  the  retreating 
enemy  and  make  sure  that  the  Eighty-ninth  marched 
as  fast  as  any  of  the  other  divisions. 

Was  this  all  there  was  to  attacking  the  formidable 
Saint  Mihiel  salient?  I  had  not  seen  a  single  shell 
burst  yet,  or  any  sign  of  the  enemy's  anger,  except 
bombs  that  were  dropped  from  the  German  aero- 


434  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

planes  in  the  back  area.  Picking  your  way  past  the 
transport  you  came  to  the  old  German  line,  and,  in 
No  Man's  Land,  the  absence  of  any  of  our  dead,  as 
far  as  you  could  see,  was  visual  proof  of  how  the 
day  had  gone.  The  engineers  were  doing  their  best 
to  bridge  over  the  trenches  and  to  make  a  solid  road 
across  the  porous  soil,  seeping  in  the  rain,  in  order 
that  the  transport  blocked  at  the  rear  might  follow 
up  our  advance.  American  and  German  wounded 
came  by  on  litters  borne  by  German  prisoners,  and 
there  were  little  detached  groups  of  prisoners,  all 
of  whom  were  ready  to  smile  very  propitiatingly  at 
the  first  sign  of  a  smile  from  their  captors — all  except 
one  typical,  square-headed  Prussian  drill  sergeant 
who  looked  very  sour.  His  men  had  not  fought, 
that  was  the  truth  of  the  matter.  The  end  of  his 
harsh  military  world  had  come  for  him. 

Looking  far  ahead  you  saw  a  little  shell  fire  in 
the  Thiaucourt  Woods,  which  was  the  only  sign  of 
action.  Down  the  slope,  in  the  foreground,  were  the 
rusty  fields  of  barbed  wire  of  the  second  and  third 
lines  of  defense  which  were  meant  to  make  the 
salient  unconquerable.  These  stretched  along  the 
whole  front  of  our  attack.  Only  the  "  get  there  " 
spirit  explained  how  our  men  had  gone  through  such 
mazes,  or  around  them.  The  road  on  the  German, 
as  well  as  our  side,  of  the  trench  system  had  been  a 
typically  well-metaled  French  road,  and  our  engi- 
neers were  filling  in  the  bad  patches  worn  by  rains 
in  the  course  of  long  disuse  on  both  sides,  with 
earth.  A  brigade  commander  had  just  established 
his  headquarters  in  an  old  German  command  post, 
and  his  was  the  same  simple  problem  as  that  of  the 


WE  TAKE  THE  SALIENT  435 

division  commander  in  pursuing  the  retreating  enemy 
as  fast  as  the  legs  of  his  men  would  carry  them. 
Our  surgeons,  at  a  former  German  dressing  station, 
sunk,  into  the  embankment  of  the  road,  had  little  to 
do.  When  a  wounded  American  came  in,  they  gave 
him  another  dressing  and  called  in  some  passing 
German  prisoners  to  carry  him  away  on  a  litter. 

The  prisoners  were  old  and  young,  but  not  the 
poorest  class  of  German  troops.  Hardly  one  I  saw 
had  any  mud  on  his  uniform,  which  was  evidence 
that  they  had  been  taken  from  their  dugouts  with- 
out resistance.  They  looked  as  neat  as  if  they  were 
ready  for  inspection.  Compared  to  the  men  of  the 
Eighty-ninth  from  Missouri  and  Kansas,  tanned,  and 
hard,  and  showing  the  effects  of  the  rain  and  the 
march  and  the  mud,  they  seemed  peculiarly  ineffec- 
tive. If  they  had  been  taken  by  surprise  so  had  their 
captors,  who  were  keyed  up  for  bloody  effort  in  their 
first  fight,  and  who  found  that  all  they  had  to  do  was 
to  gather  in  all  the  Germans  in  sight.  They  could 
not  quite  understand  how,  after  all  they  had  read  of 
what  charging  frontal  positions  meant,  they  should 
have  had  such  an  easy  victory. 

"  It  was  like  taking  candy  away  from  children," 
as  one  of  them  said.  "  But  I  guess  it  won't  always 
be  like  this.     We  had  the  jump  on  them  this  time." 

An  American  tank  was  stalled  on  the  road,  its 
captain  seated  on  the  embankment.  He  smiled, 
showing  his  white  teeth.  Had  he  been  in  it?  Oh, 
yes.  In  as  much  as  there  was  of  it.  His  tank  had 
run  up  to  the  mouth  of  dugouts  and  up  to  machine- 
gun  nests,  ambling  about.  The  chief  worry  of  the 
Germans  whom  he  had  taken  was  lest  he  should  not 


436  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

understand  that  they  meant  to  surrender.  They  had 
waved  white  handkerchiefs  from  the  mouths  of  dug- 
outs before  they  put  up  their  hands.  One  middle- 
aged  German  who  was  dug  out  of  the  bushes  where 
he  was  hiding,  when  he  was  brought  to  the  road  and 
saw  an  American  officer  standing  in  front  of  him, 
cringed  and  jumped  to  one  side,  trembHng,  with  a 
plea  in  his  eyes.  He  was  anything  but  the  militant 
personality  whom  his  officers  had  tried  to  create  by 
telling  him  that  Americans  gave  no  quarter. 

German  gunners,  two  miles  back  of  the  line,  with 
no  fresh  shell  holes  about  their  positions,  had  not 
even  taken  the  camouflage  off  their  guns  to  fire  into 
our  advancing  infantry,  but  had  deliberately  avoided 
action,  apparently  to  assure  their  safety.  This,  taken 
with  other  incidents,  which  confirmed  observation, 
indicated  the  reason  for  the  slight  resistance.  There 
was  no  use  of  an  observer  going  any  further.  It 
was  not  a  battle.  It  was  a  field  day  for  every  divi- 
sion. Our  troops  did  not  require  direction.  All  they 
had  to  do,  along  the  whole  length  of  our  line  of 
assault,  was  to  keep  on  advancing  to  their  objectives, 
cleaning  up  any  machine-gun  nests  on  the  way. 

Having  learned  that  we  were  to  make  a  great 
attack,  it  was  said  that  the  Germans,  realizing  that 
they  could  not  hold  against  the  ardor  and  force 
which  they  knew  would  characterize  it,  had  been  pre- 
paring to  withdraw  from  the  salient.  Be  that  as  it 
may,  it  does  not  interfere  with  the  significant  results. 
The  enemy  had  frooDs  in  line  behind  strong  defenses, 
and  he  hnd  artillery  and  machine  guns,  which  were 
undoubtedlv  supposed  to  make  us  pay  a  price  for 
success.     The  die-hard  spirit  was  not  in  this  com- 


WE  TAKE  THE  SALIENT  437 

mand.  After  our  tremendous  bombardment  drove 
them  to  cover  with  its  sudden  burst  of  lightnings,  and 
they  saw  our  waves  of  infantry  advancing  under  our 
barrages  with  irresistible  vigor,  the  Germans,  acting 
all  together  in  the  hard  instinct  of  their  machine 
training,  with  the  few  exceptions  of  some  machine 
gunners  who  kept  faith  with  the  Kaiser's  expecta- 
tion to  give  their  lives  for  him,  simply  sought  self- 
preservation.  They  preferred  living  as  prisoners  to 
dying  for  their  Emperor  in  hopeless  resistance. 

It  would  have  been  much  easier  to  follow  the 
troops  on  foot  than  to  make  one's  way  to  the  rear 
from  the  Eighty-ninth  Division  headquarters  in  a 
car.  Moving  this  way  and  that,  blocked  on  one  road 
and  then  another,  by  the  congestion  of  traffic,  it  took 
two  hours  to  make  a  distance  of  ten  miles. 

That  night,  General  Pershing  commanding  the 
First  Army,  had  only  to  give  orders  which  would 
complete  the  reduction  of  the  salient  and  establish 
our  new  line.  It  was  a  contest  between  the  First  and 
the  Twenty-sixth,  the  two  divisions  which  held  the 
swamps  of  the  Toul  sector  in  the  most  hateful 
memory,  as  to  which  should  first  reach  the  town  of 
Vigneulles-les-Hattonchattel,  which  was  midway  of 
the  base  of  the  salient.  Both  drove  ahead  all  night 
picking  up  more  German  prisoners  on  the  way.  The 
First  must  have  been  the  most  surprised  of  all  the 
divisions  by  its  easy  victory.  After  Cantigny  and 
Soissons,  it  knew  the  meaning  of  a  big  offensive  and 
was  prepared  for  a  savage  business.  Those  veterans 
wondered  if  they  were  dreaming  or  not,  as  they  hur- 
ried along  in  the  rear  of  those  forbidding  heights 
oT  the  salient  walls. 


438  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

The  Twenty-sixth  had  a  little  advantage  in  the 
race  and  the  advance  party  of  one  of  its  regiments 
set  foot  in  VigneuUes  before  any  of  the  patrols  of 
the  First,  at  dawn  on  the  morning  of  September 
13th,  and,  with  the  forts  of  Verdun  in  sight  on 
their  left,  they  looked  out  on  the  promised  land  from 
the  heights  of  the  town,  with  the  plain  of  the  Woevre 
stretching  before  them  in  a  wondrous  panorama. 
Now  the  high  ground  was  theirs  and  they  tasted 
the  revenge  for  all  they  had  endured  from  Mont 
Sec.  Any  wandering  Germans  between  VigneuUes 
and  Saint  Mihiel  were  trapped.  Some,  who  had  been 
on  the  march  for  twenty-four  hours,  would  have 
escaped  if  they  had  started  an  hour  earlier;  but,  in 
their  fatigue,  they  did  not  much  care  what  happened 
to  them. 

The  next  day  all  the  world,  for  the  first  time  in 
four  years,  looked  at  the  battle  line  of  the  Western 
front  minus  that  irritating  dagger  thrust,  which  was 
also  wiped  out,  along  with  the  Marne  salient,  on  the 
map  in  General  Pershing's  office  at  G.  H.  Q.,  where 
salients  were  particularly  offensive.  By  the  fruits 
of  our  victory  we  might  judge  its  character.  We  had 
taken  fifteen  thousand  prisoners,  or  three  for  every 
casualty  of  our  own,  and  two  hundred  guns  and  much 
light  railway  material.  The  railroad  from  Verdun 
to  Commercy  was  freed,  and  the  threat,  from  the 
flank,  against  any  operation  in  the  direction  of  Metz 
and  German  soil,  had  been  removed.  We  had  given 
a  bold,  clean  and  dramatic  answer  to  the  question  of 
whether  or  not  we  could  make  an  army  organization, 
and  we  had  learned  many  lessons  of  experience  which 
would  be  valuable  in  future  actions. 


WE  TAKE  THE  SALIENT  439 

The  salient  was  won  in  such  approved  order  that 
we  called  the  action  the  '*  army  maneuvers."  The 
chronicler,  who  ought  to  give  the  event  a  great  deal 
of  space,  finds  that  it  went  too  smoothly  to  furnish 
any  sensations.  It  is  the  emergencies  of  battle,  the 
development  of  unexpected  resistance,  the  ebb  and 
flow  of  fierce  attack,  the  strokes  of  prompt  general- 
ship in  the  field,  the  resolute  defense  of  a  tactical 
point  and  the  repeated  charges  to  win  a  strong  posi- 
tion, which  furnish  the  thrills  of  war.  Saint  Mihiel 
was  one  of  the  few  operations  on  record  that  worked 
out  "  as  planned." 

Our  rejoicing,  however,  could  not  equal  that  of  the 
people  who  lived  in  the  salient.  Among  them  were 
Belgians  who  had  been  brought  from  their  homes 
to  work  behind  the  lines  of  the  German  army.  Some 
Belgians  were  marching  back  behind  a  body  of  Ger- 
man prisoners  when  a  Belgian  officer  saw  them. 

"  No!  no!  "  he  cried.  "  Not  with  the  Germans! 
They  are  Belgians — Belgians !     My  people !  " 

Consider  their  joy,  which  they  shared  with  the 
residents  who  gathered  in  the  streets  of  their  vil- 
lages, at  the  sight  of  the  men  from  overseas  who 
had  driven  the  Germans  away.  It  was  almost  too 
good  to  be  true.  At  first,  they  were  struck  with 
wonder;  and  then  French  emotion  let  itself  be  felt 
in  a  way  that  convinced  the  Americans  that  it  was  not 
unpleasant  to  be  "  heroes." 

The  inhabitants  of  Saint  Mihiel,  on  their  beloved 
Meuse,  might  look  up  at  the  trench-scarred  ridges 
and  hills,  which  give  their  town  its  picturesque  situa- 
tion, now  silent  and  free  of  the  enemy.  After  living 
within  the  German  lines,  across  the  river  from  their 


440  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

own  French  army  for  four  years,  they  might  rebuild 
their  broken  bridges  and  their  homes,  earn  money 
to  replace  their  mirrors  and  clocks  and  the  brass- 
work  which  the  Germans  had  purloined,  read  their 
morning  paper  from  Paris,  speak  their  minds  about 
the  Kaiser,  pass  through  streets  where  there  were  no 
German  soldiers,  walk  abroad  without  being  shelled, 
gather  in  their  cafes  and  buy  and  sell  as  free  citizens. 
Their  own  President  of  their  own  republic,  whose 
home  was  in  Saint  Mihiel,  came  along  with  General 
Pershing  and  the  French  generals,  to  the  celebration, 
where  old  and  young  gathered  in  honor  of  their 
deliverance.  They  were  happy  beyond  expression, 
and  they  adored  General  Pershing  and  his  soldiers 
as  knights  from  a  far  country.  General  Pershing 
himself  was  not  unhappy.  He  had  that  mountain 
which  he  had  been  wanting  for  a  year;  and  a  reward, 
which  affected  him  far  more  deeply,  in  the  joyous 
faces  around  him. 


XXXIV 


OUR   ARGONNE   BATTLE 

Popular  expectations  of  the  next  move  not  realized — Offensive  after 
offensive  planned — The  "  sacred  road  " — Hard  fighting  ahead 
of  us — Many  new  divisions  in  line — The  woods,  nature's 
camouflage  of  war — The  eight  divisions  that  began  the  Ar- 
gonne  attacic — A  monstrous  truck  towing  a  balloon — A  daring 
German  aviator,  and  the  result — Our  command  of  the  air — 
A  division  from  Virginia  travels  a  hard  road — Over  a  mile 
of  shell  holes — The  only  point  in  the  first  stage  of  the  Argonne 
battle  that  seriously  arrested  us — The  open  spaces  where  the 
infantry  reign — A  modern  gentleman-at-arms — Up  against 
machine-gun  nests  again — Draft  men  in  a  lull  of  the  battle. 

Those  who  thought  that  the  Americans  would  make 
the  taking  of  the  Saint  Mihiel  salient  the  first  step 
of  an  immediate  movement  toward  Metz  were  to 
have  their  surmises  confounded  by  action  in  another 
quarter.  It  was  not  in  Marshal  Foch's  plans,  or 
General  Pershing's  conception,  that  our  army  should 
confine  itself  to  some  one  established  sector  of  attack. 
In  the  execution  of  the  Marshal's  swift  offensive 
movements,  striking  with  sudden  violence  here  and 
there,  we  should  be  a  mobile  force  within  the  reach 
of  our  line  of  communications,  which  had  been  origi- 
nally planned  with  a  half-wheel  of  range  from  the 
hub  of  its  main  depots  for  just  such  contingencies. 
While  our  divisions  which  had  won  the  salient  were 
settling  on  their  new  front  as  a  threat  to  the  Germans 
in  Lorraine,  which  at  any  time  might  develop  into 

441 


442  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

a  thrust,  the  first  of  the  divisions  for  another  con- 
centration was  slipping  undemonstratively  away  from 
its  training  area;  and  the  big  guns  mounted  on  rail- 
way trucks  and  the  rest  of  our  heavy  corps  and  army 
artillery — including  the  artillery  which  the  French 
had  loaned  us  for  reducing  the  salient — having  fin- 
ished their  task  for  the  time  being  in  the  Saint  Mihiel 
sector,  were  moving  by  the  roads  which  lead  past 
Verdun.  In  this  second  offensive  of  our  army  as  an 
army  we  were  to  use  none  of  the  troops  which  had 
been  at  Saint  Mihiel.  All  the  veteran  divisions  were 
missing  from  the  line  of  assault,  if  we  except  the 
Fourth  and  the  Seventy-seventh,  whose  terms  of 
service  had  been  brief  compared  to  those  of  the 
First,  Second,  Third  and  Twenty-sixth  and  Forty- 
second. 

We  were  to  attack  a  part  of  the  old  German  line 
where  no  general  offensive  had  been  attempted  since 
trench  warfare  began.  Our  right  was  to  rest  on  the 
river  Meuse  and  our  left  in  the  Argonne  Forest,  in 
junction  with  the  French  who  were  to  advance  at  the 
same  time  on  a  front  as  far  west  as  Auberive-sur- 
Suippes.  The  British  were  to  strike  another  blow 
toward  Cambrai  on  the  day  after  our  blow.  An 
Anglo-Belgian  offensive  in  the  Ypres  salient  was  to 
follow  theirs,  which  was,  in  turn,  to  be  followed  by 
another  French  offensive  on  the  Aisne,  while  the 
French  were  to  continue  driving  toward  St.  Quentin. 

General  Pershing  was  occupying  the  room  in  the 
Mairie  of  a  little  town  where  Petain  had  directed 
the 'defense  of  Verdun  and  Nivelle  the  retaking  of 
Fort  Douaumont,  and  Joffre  had  consulted  with  his 
generals.     The  road  that  runs  past  the  Mairie  is 


OUR  ARGONNE  BATTLE 


443 


known  as  the  "  sacred  road  " — the  road  which  saved 
Verdun.  It  had  witnessed  all  of  the  grim  movements 
of  modern  war  that  might  congest  any  highway,  the 


AMEOCAN  DIV/5/0f\/3 
iN/nxx  msT  or  rm  yeast 

SU7.  tS-IM 


fFTFJ^ 


passing  of  guns  and  troops  going  forward  and  am- 
munition without  limit  into  that  inferno  of  the  hills, 
and  the  stream  of  ambulances  for  weeks  on  end, 
with  their  burdens  of  wounded  who  had  fought  under 


444  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

the  inspiration  of  Petain's  saying:  "They  shall  not 
pass  I  " 

Across  the  hall  from  General  Pershing's  office, 
the  Chief  of  Staff  of  our  First  Army  had  his  office, 
and,  in  the  neighboring  buildings,  the  rest  of  the 
staff  which  had  organized  the  Saint  Mihiel  attack. 
Major  General  Liggett  and  the  First  Corps  Staff, 
Major  General  Cameron  and  his  Fifth  Corps  Staff, 
having  left  the  divisions  in  the  Saint  Mihiel  sector  to 
other  commands,  had  come,  together  with  Major 
General  Bullard  and  the  Third  Corps  Staff,  to  apply 
their  experience  in  the  direction  of  a  different  set 
of  divisions  in  a  new  operation  from  which  we  could 
not  expect  any  such  sensationally  brilliant  results 
as  from  Saint  Mihiel. 

Only  one  circumstance,  the  retreat  of  the  German 
army  from  France,  could  ever  lead  us  to  speak  of 
this  action  as  a  maneuver.  It  was  to  be  a  straight 
frontal  attack.  The  German  must  resist  our  advance 
or  endanger  his  line  of  communications  to  Cham- 
pagne and  Picardy.  The  area  from  Verdun  to  Hol- 
land formed  the  mouth  of  a  pocket,  although  a  broad 
one,  for  all  the  German  army  on  the  soil  of  northern 
France.  Steady  pounding  from  Verdun  to  the  Ar- 
gonne  must  be  a  part  of  any  great  plan  which  sought, 
whether  in  the  hope  of  swift  results  or  in  the 
deliberate  expectation  of  slow  results,  to  force  the 
German  army  back  to  German  soil,  or  to  draw  re- 
enforcements  from  the  Rheims-Flanders  line  under 
its  threat.  We  were  striking  toward  the  iron  fields 
of  Briey,  toward  Vouziers  and  the  ganglia  of  rail 
connections  of  Mezieres.  Every  rod  of  depth  which 
we  should  gain  was  of  tactical  importance.     Every 


OUR  ARGONNE  BATTLE  445 

prisoner  we  took,  every  German  casualty  we  caused, 
meant  so  much  pressure  released  from  the  British 
and  the  French.  There  was  hard  fighting  ahead  of 
us. 

The  time  had  come  for  this,  as  our  part  in  the 
grand  plan,  and  also  the  time  to  use  our  new  divi- 
sions, which  had  been  among  the  early  arrivals  in 
the  late  spring  and  summer  rush  of  troops.  All 
had  had  some  trench  experience;  all  had  their 
artillery;  and  they  had  had  time  to  adapt  them- 
selves, at  least  theoretically,  to  the  staff  organi- 
zation for  the  whole  which  had  been  formed.  The 
Eightieth,  or  Blue  Ridge  Division,  under  Major 
General  Cronkhite,  the  Thirty-third,  former  Na- 
tional Guard  of  Illinois,  under  Major  General  Bell, 
and  the  Thirty-fifth,  former  National  Guard  from 
Missouri  and  Kansas,  under  Major  General  Peter 
E.  Traub,  succeeding  Major  General  William  M. 
Wright,  who  had  been  transferred  to  the  command 
of  the  Eighty-ninth,  had  been  trained  with  the  Brit- 
ish, as  well  as  the  Seventy-seventh.  The  others  were 
the  Thirty-seventh,  former  National  Guard,  under 
Major  General  Charles  S.  Farnsworth,  from  the 
Middle  South,  the  Seventy-ninth,  from  Virginia  and 
Maryland,  under  Major  General  Joseph  E.  Kuhn, 
and  the  Ninety-first,  under  Major  General  William 
H.  Johnston,  from  the  Pacific  Northwest.  Thus  half 
of  the  divisions  were  of  the  draft;  and  only  one  was 
regular. 

Secrecy,  in  developing  this  operation,  was  par- 
ticularly essential,  when  we  were  going  against 
strong  defenses  on  a  line  which  It  was  to  the  interest 
of  the  German  army  to  defend  as  a  part  of  its  gen- 


446  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

eral  defensive  plan,  although  It  could  afford,  in  the 
conservation  of  its  forces  against  the  repeated  blows 
which  were  shaking  its  organization,  to  yield  the 
Saint  Mihiel  salient.  We  took  only  two  weeks  for 
the  elaborate  preparations  which  were  necessary  in 
an  area  where  there  had  been  no  American  troops 
before.  It  appeared  that  we  must  have  moved  all 
our  transport  from  Saint  Mihiel,  but  with  the  excep- 
tion of  the  army  and  corps  troops,  services  and  ar- 
tillery, these  were  a  separate  gathering  of  motor 
trucks  and  wagons  in  further  demonstration  of  how 
the  infant  American  army  had  grown. 

By  day,  as  usual,  the  roads  seemed  normal  to  the 
aerial  observer;  and,  by  night,  we  were  busy  ants 
with  the  eyes  of  owls  as  we  had  been  at  Saint 
Mihiel.  All  the  regular  transport  which  fed  the 
troops  was  kept  well  to  the  rear  with  them.  Only 
ammunition  and  guns  were  moved  forward  in  the 
course  of  forming  the  sinister  plot  against  that  old 
German  front  line  within  sight  of  the  hills  of  Verdun. 
French  and  American  military  police  and  counter- 
espionage experts  kept  a  sharp  watch  out  for  any 
suspicious  persons. 

What  should  we  have  done  without  the  woods? 
They  are  nature's  camouflage  of  war.  There  were 
stretches  of  woods  where  our  guns  were  literally  in 
tiers.  The  building  of  the  spur  track  for  the  giant 
fifteen-inch,  on  a  railroad  mounting,  under  a  fringe 
of  trees  behind  a  bluff,  alone  represented  much  labor. 
The  woods  also  gave  cover  to  all  the  infantry  which 
had  marched  toward  the  front  in  the  darkness. 
French  infantry  held  the  line  in  routine  fashion 
thinly  until  the  night  before  the  attack,  when  our 


OUR  ARGONNE  BATTLE  447 

eight  divisions  slipped  into  its  place,  almost  auto- 
matically, without  talking  and  without  confusion. 

The  number  of  guns  thundering  in  the  artillery 
preparation,  including  those  of  the  French  on  our 
left,  far  exceeded  the  number  that  had  been  firing  at 
Saint  Mihiel.  In  the  Mairie,  again  host  of  great 
plans  and  decisions,  as  early  bulletins  were  read  into 
the  map  after  the  attack  was  under  way,  they  indi- 
cated that  we  had  broken  through  the  line  at  every 
point  and  were  making  steady  progress. 

Although  it  was  late  in  September  and  in  north- 
ern France,  the  weather  was  kind  to  us.  The  sun 
was  shining.  One  who  went  toward  the  front 
might  use  his  glasses  effectively,  and  he  found 
less  congestion  of  traffic  than  at  Saint  Mihiel, 
where  the  system  of  control  had  not  been  satis- 
factorily applied.  It  is  General  Pershing's  method, 
when  something  goes  wrong,  to  concentrate  on  the 
ault  until  it  is  remedied,  and  the  results  of  this 
system  were  accordingly  evident,  although  there  will 
never  be  enough  roads  in  any  offensive  to  bring  up 
transport  and  guns  rapidly  enough  to  satisfy  the 
demands  of  an  advancing  army,  which  wants  every 
gun  and  motor  truck  close  at  its  heels. 

When  a  monstrous  motor  truck  was  holding  up 
traffic  in  a  village  street,  those  who  were  about  to 
complain  desisted  as  they  saw  that  it  carried  a  reel 
from  which  a  taut  wire  ran  heavenward  to  an  ob- 
servation balloon  that  the  truck  was  towing  as  a  boy 
tows  a  kite.  It  was  not  a  good  day  for  balloons, 
which  are  fair,  large  targets.  A  daring  German  avi- 
ator descending  from  a  cloud,  and  successfully  run- 
ning the  gamut  of  puffs  of  shell  bursts  and  the  rattle 


448  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

of  machine-gun  fire  from  the  anti-aircraft  service — 
which  is  not  difficult  when  he  makes  a  dash  with  his 
purpose  definitely  in  mind,  considering  the  aggressive 
and  praiseworthy  fashion  in  which  we  were  pressing 
our  balloons  close  to  the  front  to  keep  touch  with  the 
movement  of  our  troops — gave  the  audience  of  trans- 
port drivers,  troops  in  reserve  and  all  others  within 
view  of  his  exploit  two  thrills  while  I  was  passing. 
Everybody  looked  up  and  nobody  looked  ahead, 
when  one  and  then  a  second  of  these  huge  inflated 
forms,  softly  tugging  at  their  wire  and  looking  like 
elephants  with  padded  ears  and  trunks  curled  up 
under  their  chins,  burst  into  flames,  after  the  ob- 
server had  started  his  slow  descent  swinging  in  para- 
bolas with  the  wind  that  gave  even  the  spectator  a 
sense  of  sea-sickness. 

"  The  thing  is  to  jump  when  you  see  the  Boche 
is   going  to   get  your  balloon,"   as   a   soldier   said. 
"  There's  no  use  of  jumping  after  your  house  is  o 
fire." 

The  German  might  make  raids,  but  the  command 
of  the  air  was  with  us.  He  did  not  persist  in  com- 
bat. New  troops  which  had  seen  the  swift,  hawk- 
like flight  of  the  German  aviator  toward  his  fat  and 
helpless  prey — he  was  brought  down  by  one  of  our 
own  planes  before  he  reached  his  own  lines — were 
also  seeing  maneuvers  of  aerial  combat  with  the 
marvelous  rises  and  glides  and  turns,  and  the  "  fall- 
ing leaf,"  in  transcendent  curiosity  which  never 
wanes  for  any  observer  until  the  decision  comes, 
either  In  the  retreat  of  a  combatant  or  his  death. 

It  happened  that  I  was  following  the  Seventy- 
ninth  Division,  and  by  following  it  I  could  realize 


OUR  ARGONNE  BATTLE  449 

the  nature  of  the  obstacles  all  the  divisions  had  over- 
come. The  sector  here  had  been  on  the  edges  of  the 
battle  of  Verdun.  No  Man's  Land,  and  the  area  on 
the  other  side  of  the  trenches  for  a  depth  of  a  mile, 
had  been  under  long  and  furious  bombardment.  Shell 
craters  were  as  thick  as  holes  in  a  sieve.  In  the  mist 
of  dawn,  when  the  soldier  could  not  see  his  way 
clearly,  he  had  to  climb  down  into  a  crater  or  go 
around  it.  In  either  instance,  his  feet  might  slip  on 
the  wet  weeds  which  fringed  the  crater,  or  the  earth 
at  the  edge  of  the  crater  might  give  way. 

If  you  are  a  golfer,  consider  taking  a  walk  over 
a  stretch  of  a  mile  in  and  out  of  deep  golf  traps 
whose  walls  have  the  consistence  of  an  overhanging 
soft  bank  of  a  stream  after  a  rain,  and  you  have  an 
idea  of  the  ground  over  which  the  men  of  all  our 
divisions  had  to  charge,  carrying  their  rifles,  packs 
and  rations.  The  enemy  had  plentiful  barbed  wire; 
but,  with  this  expanse  of  shell  craters,  it  would  seem 
that  this  was  hardly  required  when  he  might  bring 
artillery  fire  and  machine-gun  fire  to  bear  on  the  at- 
tacking infantry.  The  men  of  all  the  divisions,  new 
to  such  hard  traveling,  were  not  delayed  in  their 
schedule  by  this  indescribable  stretch  of  shell-torn 
earth.  There  was  evidence  of  carelessness  in  the 
upkeep  of  their  trenches  on  the  part  of  the  Germans, 
either  showing  their  confidence  that  no  attack  would 
ever  come  in  this  direction  or  deterioration  in  appli- 
cation and  morale. 

From  the  high  ground  of  No  Man's  Land  you  had 
a  broad  sweep  of  vision.  Not  far  away  were  the 
famous  Mort  Homme  and  Hill  304,  which  were  in 
the  communiques  in  the  days  when  the  fate  of  the 


450  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

war  seemed  to  hang  on  their  possession.  The  patches 
of  dark  weeds,  speckling  the  bare  earth  of  their 
slopes,  which  had  been  churned  by  shells  until  no 
sod  remained,  made  them  appear  the  more  desolate 
in  their  silence,  looking  down  on  our  young  army 
which  was  carrying  forward  the  banner  of  the  cause 
of  the  French  dead  mixed  with  their  soil.  On  our 
right,  protected  by  the  Meuse  and  patrols  across  the 
Meuse,  the  Eightieth  had  swept  everything  before  it. 
The  highway  at  your  feet  ran  toward  the  town 
of  Montfaucon,  perched  on  a  hill  and  flanked  by 
wooded  ridges,  with  the  remains  of  its  church  in 
broken  columns  against  the  sky-line — a  very  formi- 
dable position  which  the  Germans  had  made  theirs 
in  September,  19 14,  when  their  initiative  left  them  a 
choice  in  defenses.  A  year  ago  its  taking  would 
have  been  considered  practicable  only  after  a  long 
artillery  preparation.  In  the  new  warfare  of  move- 
ment we  were  to  include  it  in  a  day's  objective;  a 
strange  thing,  there  in  the  sight  of  Mort  Homme  for 
which,  in  a  bloody  wrangle  under  unceasing  shell  fire, 
the  Germans  vainly  fought  in  many  actions.  It  was 
rumored  that  our  troops  were  already  in  Mont- 
faugon.  If  we  were,  the  fact  that  no  shells  were 
bursting  there  indicated  that  the  Germans  were  not 
firing  on  us  or  we  were  not  attacking,  or  else  we  held 
one  part  of  the  town  and  the  enemy  the  other.  One 
may  form  varying  hypotheses  of  what  is  happening 
at  a  distance.  The  engineers,  who,  by  dint  of 
amazing  industry,  had  already  made  a  passable  road 
— improving  again  on  our  Saint  Mihiel  offensive — 
through  the  sea  of  shell  craters,  were  preparing  the 
way  for  bringing  up  men  and  guns  which  would  make 


OUR  ARGONNE  BATTLE  451 

sure  that  MontfauQon  became  ours.  It  was  the  only 
point  of  the  first  stage  of  the  Argonne  battle  that 
seriously  arrested  us  in  gaining  our  objectives. 

In  going  forward,  we  passed  by  a  machine  bat- 
talion which  had  been  halted  on  a  turn  of  the  road 
awaiting  orders,  and,  beyond  that,  not  even  the  fool 
and  his  automobile  had  attempted  to  go;  for  there 
are  always  officers  who  are  disinclined  to  use  the 
means  of  locomotion  which  carry  forward  the  brave 
infantry  whom  the  roads  serve,  and  these  gentlemen 
bring  up  big  cars  toward  the  front  to  the  embarrass- 
ment of  traffic.  You  had  come  to  that  familiar 
region  in  an  army's  advance  beyond  the  guns  and  the 
transport,  reserved  by  the  interdiction  of  the  enemy's 
fire  to  the  infantry,  where  you  may  walk  as  freely  as 
shells  or  bullets  permit.  The  open  spaces  are  yours. 
Death  and  courage  reign  over  them. 

Wounded  men  and  occasional  prisoners  were  com- 
ing across  the  fields.  I  shall  not  soon  forget  one 
of  these  wounded.  The  surgeon,  in  dressing  the 
puncture  from  a  bullet,  had  removed  his  blouse  which 
hung  over  one  shoulder,  showing  the  white  flesh  of 
the  other  shoulder  and  his  chest  in  contrast  with  the 
circle  of  tan  of  his  neck.  Tall  and  spare,  with  his 
helmet  on  his  arm,  the  afternoon  sun  turned  his  hair 
to  bronze  and  threw  his  definitely  chiseled  and  really 
handsome  features  into  a  glowing  silhouette.  His 
back  was  a  straight  line,  and  his  walk  which  had  a 
great  dignity,  in  keeping  with  the  scene  and  the  bare 
shoulder  and  breast,  the  drooping  blouse  and  the 
helmet  on  his  arm,  suggested  the  very  aristocracy  of 
democracy  as  a  fit,  militant  answer  to  the  glitter  in 
the  eyes  of  some  redoubtable  Prussian  officer.     If 


452  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

there  were  ever  a  picture  of  the  crusader  overseas 
it  was  this  soldier,  all  unconscious  of  the  symbolism, 
which  we  call  art,  in  his  appearance.  You  knew  that 
he  feared  nothing  that  walked  the  earth.  The  pity 
is  that  Sargent  could  not  tave  painted  him  as  he 
was  under  the  title  of  a  "  Modern  gentleman-at- 
arms." 

Now  and  then  a  spent  bullet  passed  with  its  dying 
song.  There  were  rattling  bursts  of  machine-gun 
fire  ahead  and  on  the  flanks.  We  were  up  against 
the  nests  again.  Quite  distinctly  through  the  glasses 
you  might  see  our  men  advancing  up  the  slope  toward 
the  woods  to  the  left  of  MontfauQon  and  how,  when 
they  came  to  the  sky-line,  as  the  machine  guns  began 
rattling,  they  turned  to  the  right,  keeping  under 
cover  of  the  crest  in  their  enveloping  movement;  and 
on  the  slopes,  to  the  east  of  Montfaugon,  there  were 
other  figures  feeling  their  way  forward.  The  town 
was  now  hidden  from  view  in  the  valley  by  a  hill  in 
front  of  it;  and  in  a  sunken  road  on  the  slope  of 
the  hill  we  found  the  men  of  a  platoon  concealed. 
They  had  started  over  the  crest  to  be  met  with 
machine-gun  fire  from  both  flanks  as  well  as  from  the 
town — a  cross-fire  hurricane.  They  had  brought 
away  their  wounded  and  left  their  dead,  and  they 
were  waiting  under  orders  until  the  flanks  had  done 
their  work  in  "  pinching  out "  Montfaucon.  With 
the  machine  bullets  cracking  over  it  the  crest  of 
the  hill  did  not  invite  prolonged  observation;  and  the 
tired  soldiers  of  the  platoon  showed  a  passing  curi- 
osity when  some  of  their  number  dug  out  three  Ger- 
mans who  were  hiding  in  some  bushes. 

This  scene,  typical  of  this  kind  of  open  fighting, 


OUR  ARGONNE  BATTLE  453 

with  the  land  untenanted  except  by  the  movement  of 
the  attacking  soldiers,  had  a  fresh  interest  because  the 
soldiers  were  draft  men.  You  were  certain  that  you 
had  only  to  say  the  word  and  that  platoon  would 
have  charged  over  the  crest  through  the  hurricane 
and  kept  on  going.  After  all  the  intensive  theory  of 
the  training  camps  at  home,  they  were  having  les- 
sons that  day  in  General  Pershing's  school  in  France 
where  instruction  is  very  practical.  In  returning  to 
the  rear  you  might  hear  the  talk  and  the  chaff  of 
machine  gunners  at  the  bend  In  the  road. 

"  They  say  the  British  are  going  after  them  to- 
day, too  1  Hitting  'em  all  along  the  line !  That's 
the  way.  The  Boche  don't  know  which  way  to  look 
for  the  next  blow." 

"  What  do  you  know  about  it?  You've  only  been 
in  the  army  six  months !  " 

"  Some  people  wouldn't  learn  much  if  they  were 
in  it  for  a  hundred  years." 

"  Did  you  read  that  in  the  Stars  and  Stripes?  " 

"  Wonder  when  we're  going  to  move.  We've  got 
a  lot  of  ammunition  here  from  the  Springfield  Ar- 
senal to  deliver  to  the  Boche." 

At  Army  Headquarters  you  might  learn  that  we 
had  eight  thousand  prisoners  and  less  than  that  num- 
ber of  casualties,  and  that  the  French  had  also  broken 
through  at  all  points,  taking  the  strong  positions 
which  they  had  faced  for  four  years  such  as  the 
Tahure  and  the  Mesnil  hills.  That  night  there  was  a 
heavy  rain,  which  was  a  blessing  to  the  German,  as  it 
turned  the  new  roads  over  the  porous  No  Man's 
Land  into  mires  for  our  artillery,  while  he  was  bring- 
ing up  reenforcements  along  his  established  roads 


454  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

to  make  the  stand  he  must  make  In  this  sector.  Our 
offensive  spirit  was  not  to  hesitate  in  accepting  the 
challenge. 

How  the  men  of  the  Sevetity-seventh  won  their 
way  through  the  maze  of  old  works  in  the  Argonne 
Forest,  where  I  saw  them  cheery  if  soaking,  and  all 
the  details  of  the  operations  of  the  divisions  in  the 
Argonne  fighting,  along  with  the  action  of  the 
Twenty-seventh  and  Thirtieth  divisions  of  the  Sec- 
ond Corps  with  the  British,  against  the  Hindenburg 
line,  must  wait  upon  further  information  and  be- 
come a  part  of  a  future  narrative. 


XXXV 


AVIATION 


Aviation  fallacies — Not  as  easy  to  make  an  aeroplane  as  an  auto- 
mobile— We  suffer  from  the  affliction  of  seeing  "  big " — 
Debates  and  delays — Abundance  of  would-be  aviators — The 
Liberty  Motor  apparently  a  myth — Pessimists  of  various, 
shades — The  Liberty  Motor  a  success — iWhat  "  mastery  of 
the  air"  means — Air  prospects  for  1919. 

Man  being  more  pliable  than  metal  and  his  parts 
coordinated  into  the  most  adaptable  of  machines, 
we  were  to  have  soldiers  in  the  trenches  before  we 
had  artillery,  machine  guns,  tanks  and  aeroplanes 
and  other  mechanical  equipment  ready  for  their  sup- 
port. In  the  summer  of  19 17,  the  people  at  home 
were  thinking  more  of  winning  the  war  through  the 
conquest  of  the  air  than  through  the  raw  recruits  in 
our  training  camps.  The  conception  of  great  flocks 
of  aeroplanes  dropping  bombs  on  the  enemy's  roads, 
depots  and  troops  called  to  public  imagination  with 
all  the  transcendency  of  everything  associated  with 
flight. 

We  appropriated  a  hundred  million  dollars  for 
aviation.  Our  genius  in  standardization  and  in  quan- 
tity production,  which  had  developed  our  immense 
output  in  automobiles,  we  proposed  to  apply  to  aero- 
planes. They  were  the  means  of  breaking  the  stale- 
mate on  the  Western  front,  the  short  cut  to  victory, 

455 


4S6  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

when  it  must  take  a  long  time  to  organize  a  great 
army.  The  submarine  and  tonnage  limitations  might 
never  permit  us  to  transport  the  army  to  Europe, 
even  after  it  was  prepared,  but  once  we  were  turn- 
ing out  aeroplanes  by  the  thousands,  an  enormous 
agency  of  destruction,  requiring  a  small  personnel 
and  little  shipping,  would  be  more  effective  than 
scores  of  divisions. 

The  pioneers  of  our  expedition  in  France  know- 
ing that  aeroplanes,  important  as  they  were,  could 
be  only  one  part  of  any  military  force,  in  which  the 
man  with  the  fixed  bayonet  is  the  final  factor  in 
gaining  and  holding  ground,  were  justly  apprehen- 
sive lest  the  concentration  of  public  attention  on  an 
aerial  programme  should  divert  us  from  the  essen- 
tial preparations,  particularly  troops  and  shipping. 
We  knew,  too,  that  of  all  our  dreams  that  of  the 
air  would  be  slowest  of  fulfillment.  For  three  years 
the  most  driving  kind  of  necessity,  which  was  ever 
the  mother  of  invention,  had  had  at  its  command  the 
most  skilled  artisans  and  experts  in  Europe  in  the 
rapid  improvement  of  aeroplane  motors,  while  the 
changes  in  material  and  practice  of  aviation  had  been 
startling  in  their  rapidity.  No  nation,  however  enter- 
prising, which  had  not  been  in  the  war,  could  possibly 
approximate  the  accumulated  skill  and  experience  of 
the  new  branch,  whose  secrets  had  been  rigidly  kept, 
except  after  a  long  period  of  training  and  prepa- 
ration. 

Of  course,  the  heart  of  aviation  is  the  motor,  and 
Its  building,  not  to  mention  the  building  of  the  plane 
itself,  is  a  most  delicate  business.  The  natural  life 
of  a  plane,  particularly  of  the  motor,  is  astonishingly 


AVIATION  457 

brief.  A  machine  which  requires  weeks  to  build  and 
weeks  of  trying  out  may  be  lost  in  its  first  flight. 

This  call  for  aerial  supremacy  was  not  new.  It 
was  most  potent  from  the  infantry  whose  morale  was 
peculiarly  sensitive  to  the  inevitably  capricious  fluc- 
tuations of  the  aerial  support  which  it  received. 
Other  publics  had  also  been  urgent  for  a  great  pro- 
gramme. The  cry  for  thousands  of  aeroplanes  to 
bombard  the  Rhine  towns,  yes  to  bombard  Berlin, 
was  heard  in  England,  without  thought  that  Berlin 
was  out  of  range  and  that  in  reaching  the  capitals 
and  great  cities  of  the  Allies,  the  Germans,  with 
aerodromes  on  Belgian  and  French  territory,  had 
only  short  flights  to  their  objectives.  To  the  layman, 
it  seemed  as  easy  to  make  an  aeroplane  as  an  auto- 
mobile, when,  as  an  aviator  remarked,  the  law  of 
gravity  had  not  yet  been  abolished. 

The  news  reports  from  America  in  the  summer 
and  fall  of  19 17,  exploiting  for  the  Allied  publics 
our  own  aerial  preparations  as  something  near  ac- 
complishment, were  somewhat  embarrassing  to  our 
pioneers  of  the  Rue  de  Constantine,  who  knew  the 
obstacles  in  the  way  of  accomplishment.  While  the 
hundred-million-dollar  fund  held  people  under  the 
spell  of  its  prodigality,  a  most  energetic  officer  was 
on  the  jump  in  and  out  of  our  headquarters  in  Paris 
in  his  effort  to  start  an  aerial  programme  in  France. 
He  had  as  elaborate  blue  prints  as  any  of  the  en- 
gineers of  the  S.  O.  S.,  which  were  of  the  same  bold 
spirit.  We  heard  of  him  flying  over  Verdun  one  day, 
and  in  Flanders  the  next,  and  the  next  down  on  the 
fields  at  Issoudun,  where  we  were  to  build  an  aviation 
city.    The  very  spirit  of  flight  was  in  him;  and  he 


458  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

seemed  to  be  propelled  by  the  dynamic  force  of  an 
aeroplane  motor. 

Other  officers  of  aviation,  who  ranked  him,  ar- 
rived from  the  States,  and  they  had  the  same  volatile, 
hurrying  characteristics.  Aviation  was  the  branch 
d* elite,  which  moved  in  a  soaring  and  technical  world 
of  its  own,  mystifying  to  outsiders,  who  held  it  in 
the  awe  which  is  associated  with  the  romance  of  the 
"  ace,"  who  travels  at  one  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
an  hour  as  he  engages  his  adversary  ten  thousand 
feet  above  the  earth,  as  compared  with  the  mortal 
who  advances  by  arduously  pulling  first  one  foot 
and  then  the  other  out  of  the  mud  of  communication 
trenches. 

Our  aviation  band  established  great  offices  in 
Paris,  where  everybody  was  working  under  furious 
pressure  and  cars  waited  at  the  door,  and  a  stranger 
felt  something  of  the  awkwardness  of  the  man  who 
finds  that  he  must  have  mistaken  his  street  and 
number  when  he  is  ushered  in  among  the  guests  of 
a  dinner  party  to  which  he  was  not  invited.  When 
you  looked  over  the  blue  prints  at  that  busy  aviation 
headquarters  it  was  not  quite  good  form  to  ask 
"  How  many  planes  have  you?"  although  the  ques- 
tion might  bring  the  frank  answer,  "  We  have  noth- 
ing but  hopes,  promises,  money  and  energy."  As 
well  inquire  how  many  Browning  machine  guns  had 
arrived. 

In  no  branch  did  that  American  characteristic  of 
seeing  "  big  "  In  the  period  of  conception  suffer  more 
from  the  affliction  of  the  period  when  accomplish- 
ment was  impatiently  expected.  We  were  preparing 
on  paper,  at  least,  to  receive,  to  assemble  and  to  fly 


AVIATION  459 

the  Liberty  planes,  for  one  thing;  and  for  another, 
which  was  more  to  the  point,  we  were  trying  to  pre- 
pare with  something  more  substantial  than  paper,  for 
a  sufficient  aerial  squadron  to  support  our  divisions 
when  they  should  go  into  the  trenches.  If  we  had 
no  planes  of  our  own  make  we  should  buy  them  from 
the  Allies.  This  really  meant,  at  first  sight,  only 
supplying  personnel  for  French,  British  or  Italian 
planes,  without  increasing  the  number  of  planes  in 
the  air,  but  it  was  the  only  way  to  bring  a  force 
of  our  own  into  being  as  the  nucleus  for  further 
development. 

We  sought  the  best  and  latest  types,  of  course. 
This  involved  debates,  subject  to  the  rapid  improve- 
ments which  superseded  the  type  which  was  best  one 
month  with  another  type  the  next.  If  I  were  to  be- 
come technical,  at  the  expense  of  generalization,  my 
task  would  have  only  begun  with  the  study  of  the 
sheafs  of  cablegrams  to  and  from  Washington,  in 
which  the  details  about  one  motor  took  as  much 
space  as  the  requisition  of  enough  material  to  build 
a  regulating  station. 

At  least,  we  should  not  want  for  personnel.  Ap- 
parently, all  the  American  ambulanciers  in  France 
were  bent  upon  becoming  aviators.  Every  senior 
officer  in  the  army  knows  how  numerous  are  his 
young  friends  who  think  that  they  are  particularly 
suited  to  become  fliers.  At  home,  we  had  the  choice 
of  hundreds  of  thousands  of  youths  who  were  con- 
vinced that  the  air  was  their  natural  element  when 
they  looked  skyward  after  a  hard  day's  drill  in  the 
infantry  camps.  It  is  never  necessary  to  draft  men 
Into  aviation.    The  call  is  that  of  a  knighthood  rid- 


46o  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ing  the  clouds  on  your  own  steed,  with  your  own 
inclination  your  guide,  and  with  death  coming  cleanly 
in  the  very  exhilaration  of  immortal  flight  in  the 
heavens. 

You  rise  in  princely  isolation  from  the  aerodrome 
after  your  machine  is  made  ready  by  your  attendants. 
When  you  return  they  run  out  in  the  field  to  take 
charge  of  it,  while  you  go  to  your  bath  and  a  good 
meal.  All  the  world  regards  you  as  the  romantic  type 
of  war.  It  is  quite  different  from  being  a  lieutenant 
of  infantry,  who  must  see  that  his  platoon  does  not 
suffer  too  much  from  "  cooties,"  keep  up  the  spirits 
of  his  men  in  the  course  of  infinite  drudgery  of  de- 
tail, charge  machine-gun  nests,  lie  out  all  night  in 
damp  woods,  hug  reeking  ditches  for  cover  under 
gas  and  high  explosives,  face  death  in  unclean  and 
unromantic  forms  and  take  his  "  rest "  out  of  the 
line  in  the  chilly  room  of  a  village  house,  perhaps 
next  door  to  a  pig-sty. 

The  Allies  hospitably  received  our  cadets  into 
their  schools  until  we  had  our  own  schools,  where  we 
used  older  types  of  Allied  planes  for  training.  We 
had  fliers  in  Italy  as  well  as  with  the  French  and 
British,  and  we  waited  for  the  delivery  of  Allied 
planes  which  had  been  ordered.  The  Italian  defeat 
on  the  Isonzo,  the  collapse  of  Russia  and  all  the 
accompanying  strain  on  the  Allied  armies,  meant  that 
promises,  which  are  ever  subject  in  war  to  its  vicissi- 
tudes, could  not  be  kept,  while  all  the  news  from 
home  led  the  cynical  to  exclaim  when  the  penetrating 
cold  of  winter  was  in  their  marrow:  "  There's  a  lot 
of  talk — but  what's  coming  of  it?  " 

The  prospects  for  the  realization  of  the  great 


AVIATION  461 

aeriai  programme  were  not  encouraging.  Not  only 
were  the  Liberty  motors  not  appearing,  but  the 
gossip  of  the  dark-blue  pessimists  said  that  they  were 
a  complete  failure,  while  the  light-blue  pessimists, 
being  more  cheerful,  said  that  they  would  be  ready 
after  the  war.  What  could  we  expect  ?  both  declared 
in  one  voice.  According  to  report,  we  had  sopho- 
morically  called  some  experts  together  and  directed 
them  to  assemble  the  best  parts  of  other  motors  and 
make  a  perfect  motor.  Did  not  these  enthusiasts 
know  that  all  machines  were  the  result  of  long  ex- 
periments? You  could  not  produce  a  motor  from 
blue  print  forms.  To  tell  the  truth,  the  Liberty 
motor  became  pretty  nearly  a  joke  with  the  Expedi- 
tionary Forces.  Meanwhile,  the  Germans,  driven 
to  their  utmost  efforts,  with  no  Russian  front  to  look 
after,  were  producing  aeroplanes  at  a  rate  which 
was  as  disturbing  as  their  concentrations  of  divisions 
for  their  spring  offensive.  Their  hope  of  a  decision 
included  overwhelming  forces  in  the  air,  as  well  as 
on  the  earth,  in  action  before  either  our  aeroplanes 
or  troops  arrived  in  large  numbers. 

Pessimism  in  this  branch,  as  in  every  other,  eased 
the  minds  of  our  workers,  who  never  paused  in  their 
unremitting  industry.  The  school  at  Issoudun  had 
come  into  being  and  other  schools  also.  Those  vet- 
eran fliers  of  the  Lafayette  Escadrille,  who  had  had 
an  esprit  de  corps  of  their  own,  with  sentimental 
attachment  to  their  old  associations  yielding  to  pa- 
triotic desire,  had  become  a  part  of  the  American 
aviation  force.  Their  experience,  under  the  leader- 
ship of  Raoul  Lufbery,  was  of  great  service,  when 
all  the  long  preparation   and   anticipation   had  its 


462  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

first  practical  expression  in  aerodromes  behind  our 
own  Toul  sector,  from  which  Americans  were  flying 
in  machines  bought  from  the  Allies  in  liaison  with 
our  infantry  in  as  professional  a  manner  as  the 
French  aviators.  In  command  in  the  field  was  that 
strenuous  pioneer  of  the  early  days,  who  was  later 
to  become  the  chief  of  aviation  of  our  First  Army; 
while  Major  General  Mason  M.  Patrick,  with  his 
main  office  at  Tours,  had  become  the  Chief  of  the 
organization  which  was  to  expand  with  a  rapidity 
during  the  summer  in  keeping  with  all  the  other 
parts  of  our  army  in  France. 

When  the  first  Liberty  motor  was  received  in  the 
spring  of  191 8,  the  news  spread  fast  through  the 
whole  army.  Never  had  any  single  bit  of  mechanism 
assumed  such  importance  in  the  world  unless  it  was 
the  first  plane  Wilbur  Wright  brought  to  Europe  or 
the  first  wireless  apparatus.  How  was  the  child 
which  had  been  so  long  in  horning?  Was  it  bow- 
legged  and  cross-eyed?  Did  it  have  scrofula  and  hip 
disease?  After  all  the  months  of  exploitation  what 
sort  of  product  had  the  hundred-million-dollar  pro- 
gramme brought  forth?  We  were  prepared  to  be 
critical;  our  faith  had  become  attenuated.  Accord- 
ingly, the  reports  that  you  heard  by  the  wayside  were 
not  encouraging.  The  dark  blues,  depending  upon 
hearsay,  said  that,  barring  some  twenty  or  thirty 
faults,  the  Liberty  was  all  right,  while  the  light  blues 
reduced  the  number  of  faults  to  ten  or  fifteen  in 
order  to  keep  up  their  reputation  as  cheerful 
prophets. 

Happily,  the  pessimists  were  now  as  wrong  as  the 
optimists  had  been  a  year  before  when  they  were 


AVIATION  463 

to  hide  the  Rhine  from  the  sun  with  the  sweep  of 
our  flotillas.  The  Liberty  was  used  for  the  first  time 
by  our  air  forces  in  the  Marne  battle.  It  had  faults, 
to  be  remedied,  as  every  motor  has,  but  it  was  de- 
clared an  undoubted  success  for  the  purpose  for 
which  it  was  designed. 

There  had  never  been  any  intention  on  the  part 
of  its  sponsors  that  it  would  be  used  in  the  single- 
seater,  fighting  plane,  but  the  object  in  its  creation 
was  to  produce  a  standardized  motor  of  one  type  for 
two-seated  observation  planes  and  for  day  and  night 
bombing  planes.  Its  speed  was  such,  nevertheless, 
that  the  experts  said  that  it  could  run  away  from 
practically  any  German  single-seater  in  the  air  in  the 
fall  of  191 8. 

We  were  to  continue  to  depend  upon  the  devel- 
oped types  of  the  Allies  for  combat  and  pursuit.  In 
turn,  we  were  to  supply  them  with  the  Liberties  for 
observation  and  bombing.  This  was  the  plan,  from 
the  start,  in  coordinating  Allied  aircraft  production, 
which,  after  many  vicissitudes,  and  after  delays 
which  need  not  be  mentioned  here,  had  its  fulfill- 
ment. The  British  and  French  and  Italian  avia- 
tion services,  after  the  exhibition  of  the  Liberty's 
efficiency,  were  eager  for  every  one  that  we  could 
make. 

In  the  Saint  Mihiel  and  the  Argonne  operations, 
the  number  of  our  planes  was  in  keeping  with  the 
manifestation  of  our  power  in  guns,  if  not  in  troops, 
as  the  army  family  assembled,  while  the  fact  that 
we  had  partly  to  depend  upon  French  planes  was 
af?ain  significant  of  the  truth  of  the  first  sentence  of 
this  chapter.    The  frequent  passing  of  the  bull's-eye 


464  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

with  a  white  center,  painted  on  the  under  side  of  the 
lower  wings,  which  meant  that  the  plane  was  Ameri- 
can, was  a  delight  to  the  eyes  of  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  men,  and  the  identification  of  the  Liberties 
among  our  aerial  forces  one  of  the  new  diver- 
sions of  everybody  at  the  front  and  at  the  rear. 
Once  the  stream  of  output  was  started  from  home 
the  thing  was  to  keep  it  ever  increasing  until 
our  preponderance  in  the  air  was  overwhelming. 
*'  Mastery  of  the  air  "  is  a  common  phrase.  There 
has  never  been  any  such  thing  as  complete  mastery 
of  the  air,  if  by  this  it  is  meant  that  the  enemy 
aviators  may  not  pass  over  an  imaginary  line  in  the 
air  drawn  over  the  battle  line.  At  any  time  that 
either  side  has  a  definite  object  in  crossing  into  enemy 
territory  this  can  be  accomplished  by  the  sudden  rush 
of  a  concentration  of  planes,  in  which  the  observer 
is  protected  by  fighting  planes.  We  were  strong 
enough  in  the  air,  in  the  autumn  of  19 18,  to  keep 
the  German  over  his  own  lines  as  a  rule,  but  not  to 
prevent  his  reconnaissances  or,  of  course,  night 
bombing.  A  patrol  of  a  hundred  thousand  aero- 
planes would  hardly  accomplish  this  on  the  long 
Western  front. 

Early  in  his  offensive  of  19 18,  the  German  had  as 
many  planes  as  the  Allies,  if  not  more;  and  when  he 
used  them  over  our  lines  he  came  in  force  to  gain 
his  ends.  Otherwise,  he  remained  at  home.  Fight- 
ing for  fighting's  sake,  although  it  is  spectacular  and 
makes  *'  aces,"  may  be  bad  tactics.  One  day,  when 
our  aviators  saw  that  a  German  plane,  under  convoy 
of  fighting  planes,  evidently  carried  a  photographic 
apparatus,  they  did  the  right  thing  by  concentrating 


AVIATION  465 

successfully  on  the  destruction  of  the  recording  eye 
that  would  take  home  a  picture  of  our  dispositions. 
German  aviation  has  been  intensely  practical;  and 
the  Allied  aim  in  the  autumn  of  19 18  was  the 
same. 

The  principal  development  of  the  year's  aerial 
campaign  had  been  in  the  value  of  such  concentra- 
tions; in  the  use  of  machine  guns  from  aeroplanes 
flying  low  against  infantry  and  transport  which,  on 
occasion,  had  forced  generals  to  leave  their  cars  and 
dodge  around  trees  and  rocks  to  escape  the  wheeling 
pursuit  of  an  aviator;  and  also  in  the  increase  of 
bombing,  A  hundred  and  fifty  pound  bomb  is  just 
as  destructive  as  a  hundred  and  fifty  pound  shell. 
The  ruins  of  some  towns,  which  were  back  of  the 
lines  out  of  the  reach  of  shell  fire,  were  evidence 
enough  that  aerial  bombing  was  now  a  serious  factor. 
The  big  British  Handley-Page  machines  had  worked 
havoc  on  German  communications,  and  our  Liberty 
motors  were  meant  for  such  work.  Thus  the  great 
aerial  ofi^ensive  which  was  widely  advertised  upon 
our  entry  into  the  war  was  another  prospect  which 
the  Germans  had  to  face  along  with  the  certainty 
that  in  the  spring  of  19 19,  the  Allies  would  have 
double  the  number  of  aeroplanes  the  Germans  could 
possibly  produce. 

Should  anyone  question  that  our  aviators  would 
be  equal  to  their  task?  It  seems  idle  to  dwell  on  the 
point.  Our  ardor  in  the  air,  as  on  the  earth,  was  in 
contrast  with  the  weariness  of  the  other  armies  which 
had  fought  for  four  years.  They  had  drawn  on  their 
reserves  of  youth.  We  had  the  pick  of  our  fresh 
reserves.    Our  talent  for  flying  was  a  part  with  our 


466  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

baseball  and  football  and  national  characteristics. 
Our  aviators,  who  had  the  luck  to  be  among  the  first 
to  fly  in  France,  were  urged  on  to  exploits  by  the 
very  pressure  of  the  long  waiting  list  of  ambitious 
aspirants. 


XXXVI 

THE  GREAT   PROJECT  REALIZED 

Vast  growth  of  our  plant  in  France — Ferrying  of  soldiers  across 
the  Atlantic  made  systematic — New  troops  in  France  met  on 
every  side  by  American  foresight — Pooling  of  Allied  resources 
— We  are  everywhere  in  France — France  prospering  in  war- 
time— Effect  of  America  in  France  on  the  French  and  the 
British — The  Y.  M.  C.  A. — Incalculable  improvement  of  army 
conditions  over  Spanish-American  war  days — Good  care  of  our 
soldiers — Chaplains  of  different  faiths — Our  debt  to  General 
Pershing — Final  and  complete  victory  in  sight. 

All  the  effort  which  links  the  weeks  and  months 
together  makes  the  Rue  de  Constantine  in  Paris 
seem  very  far  away.  As  we  look  backward  to  those 
cramped  headquarters,  which  held  our  promise  of 
practical  aid  to  the  Allies,  we  better  understand 
what  must  have  been  the  thoughts  in  those  days  of 
the  Allied  statesmen  and  generals  who  concealed 
their  apprehensions  as  they  placed  their  hope  in  us. 
A  year  later,  we  Had  immense  hotels  as  our  offices  for 
the  mere  incidental  business  of  the  rear  of  our  organi- 
zation which  must  be  conducted  in  Paris,  and  all  their 
activity,  with  their  American  telephones  and  card- 
index  systems,  seemed  a  commonplace  of  develop- 
ment from  the  plans  that  had  their  origin  in  the  Rue 
de  Constantine. 

No  one  observer  could  any  longer  compass  our 
progress  unless  he  traveled  in  an  aeroplane  and  his 

467 


468  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

eyes  could  see  through  the  roofs  of  buildings  and 
into  the  hearts  and  brains  of  men,  while  his  mind 
correlated  observations  and  information  which  he 
could  express  with  a  genius  worthy  of  his  subject. 
The  S.  O.  S.  had  grown  prodigiously  through  the 
spring  and  summer  months,  with  tonnage  striving 
to  keep  pace  with  increased  demands.  Old  regulat- 
ing stations  had  doubled  in  size;  new  ones  and  new 
depots  were  being  built.  Long  lines  of  quays  were 
finished;  the  time  of  "  turn  around  "  of  shipping  had 
been  reduced  until  it  was  largely  in  keeping  with  the 
expectations  of  an  improving  organization  and  the 
installation  of  labor-saving  devices. 

Our  navy  blue  had  become  as  common  in  the 
ports  as  our  khaki  in  inland  towns.  Ships  brought 
us  supplies  through  the  Straits  of  Gibraltar  as  well 
as  to  the  western  ports  of  France.  We  spoke  to  one 
another  over  our  own  cables  under  the  seas  to  England 
as  well  as  over  the  wires  which  ran  across  country  on 
the  poles  we  had  set.  We  had  written  clearly  and 
in  infinite  detail  upon  Mr.  Baker's  sheet  of  white 
paper.  We  had  kept  on  overflowing  from  province 
to  province  until  the  outposts  of  our  extending  world 
were  looking  out  on  the  Mediterranean  as  well  as  on 
the  Swiss  border. 

The  soldiers  of  a  division,  from  the  time  that  they 
were  put  on  the  train  at  their  home  camps,  east,  west, 
north  or  south,  now  moved  with  something  of  the 
facility  of  a  passenger  who  checked  his  baggage  from 
Chicago  through  to  London  by  fast  trains  and  steam- 
ers in  the  old  days.  They  went  on  board  ship  where 
a  system  was  established  as  the  result  of  months 
of  experience;  they  approached  a  port  in  France, 


THE  GREAT  PROJECT  REALIZED    469 

under  a  convoy  of  destroyers  which  also  knew  their 
part  from  experience,  and,  arriving  in  the  port,  they 
found  that  they  were  in  the  presence  of  American 
docks,  lighters  and  cranes  and  American  officers  and 
mechanics  and  stevedores.  They  were  disembarked 
as  promptly  as  they  had  been  embarked ;  and  at  every 
point,  after  they  landed,  someone  was  on  hand  to 
tell  the  commanders  where  to  go  and  what  to  do, 
without  any  further  worry  on  their  part  until  they 
were  in  a  billeting  area,  where  they  had  to  be  ac- 
climatized after  the  close  quarters  of  their  voyage, 
and  their  programme  of  training  had  been  issued  to 
them. 

If  freight  piled  up  on  quays,  if  cars  crowded  sid- 
ings the  driving  word  "  Must  I  "  was  one  which 
would  allow  no  peace  in  the  time  of  war  to  those 
responsible  for  delay  until  the  difficulty  was  over- 
come. The  pooling  of  resources,  British,  French, 
Italian  and  American,  had  ceased  to  be  a  theory  of 
conferences  and  had  become  a  practical  matter  for 
governing  bodies.  The  great  storage  warehouses 
for  shells  and  explosives  or  for  machine  guns  were 
none  too  large.  Shells  and  explosives  were  arriving 
in  huge  quantities.  At  the  front,  you  heard  the 
urgent  calls  for  the  Browning  machine  gun,  one  of 
our  efforts  at  "  the  best "  which  had  been  long  in 
materializing,  but  it  had  the  verdict  of  approval  of 
those  judges  who  face  the  enemy. 

Our  big  hospital  trains,  which  had  been  ready 
when  hard  fighting  began,  as  they  bore  their  burdens 
of  sick  and  wounded  to  the  great  hospitals,  which 
had  also  been  ready,  were  a  touching  and  appealing 
proof  of  the  wisdom  of  the  S.  O.  S.  project  to  the 


470  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

French  population.  We  had  settled  into  the  life  of 
the  country,  we  had  crowded  the  towns  of  central 
and  southern  France  with  our  offices  as  well  as  the 
villages  of  eastern  France  with  the  billeting  of  our 
soldiers.  We  were  everywhere  in  France,  as  I  have 
said,  and  always  busy,  drilling,  building,  planning, 
forwarding  supplies,  organizing,  cutting  lumber  and 
wood  from  the  forests,  repairing  railroads  and  roll- 
ing stock  and  laying  new  telegraph  lines. 

With  the  British  army  and  ours,  France  had  on 
her  own  soil  more  able-bodied  men  in  her  support 
than  in  her  own  army.  She  had  seen  the  energy  of 
our  distant  new  land,  known  to  her  people  through 
photographs,  hearsay  and  news  dispatches,  reflective 
of  our  sensational  and  bizarre  doings  rather  than  our 
reality,  develop  under  her  eyes;  and  our  character, 
associated  with  summer  tourists  sometimes  raucous 
and  boastful  on  a  holiday,  as  intense,  restlessly  in- 
dustrious and  determined.  She  had  seen  us  as 
we  are  when  we  are  at  work  at  home,  which 
is  the  only  true  way  of  seeing  any  nation.  We  had 
seen  the  French  also  at  home  and  at  work,  when 
their  supposed  volatility  changed  to  grim  persistence 
in  face  of  discouragement,  and  we  had  seen  the 
British  in  their  most  gloriously  stubborn  moments. 
We  had  seen  both  when  the  sight  of  our  battalions 
rallied  their  hopes  against  the  German  offensives; 
and,  then,  in  the  supreme  happiness — the  happiness 
of  a  man  who  thinks  that  he  must  be  in  a  dream  and 
puts  out  his  hand  questioningly  to  feel  of  reality — 
of  driving  the  foe  beyond  the  old  trench  line  toward 
the  frontier  of  Germany. 

America,  which  had  accumulated  money  in  the 


THE  GREAT  PROJECT  REALIZED    471 

first  three  years  of  the  war,  set  the  flow  of  gold, 
which  we  had  received  from  France,  and  particu- 
larly from  England,  for  their  purchases  in  our  mar- 
kets, back  to  France  in  the  sums  which  our  soldiers 
spent  and  our  army  spent  for  supplies.  France  was 
winning,  and  France  prospered  after  her  long  period 
of  economic  strain.  With  another  two  years  of  war, 
the  land  without  gold  mines,  which  had  become  the 
world's  battle  ground,  would  become  the  world's 
banker  of  gold.  Europe,  which  had  formerly  re- 
garded us  as  money  grubbers,  which  had  spoken  of 
America  as  the  land  of  the  Almighty  Dollar,  saw  us 
disregarding  money,  submitting  to  heavy  taxes,  a 
people  of  sentiment  offering  our  lives,  including  men 
with  names  that  were  German  and  Hungarian,  for 
the  principle  that  brought  us  into  the  war. 

To  the  French,  who  are  not  a  traveled  people,  we 
brought  some  of  the  effects  of  travel;  to  the  islanders 
of  England  we  joined  with  the  Canadians,  Austra- 
lians and  New  Zealanders  in  bringing  the  wide,  gen- 
erous vistas  of  continents  across  the  salty  wisdom 
of  the  seas.  The  educational  process  was  mutual. 
We  learned  the  meaning  of  intensive  civilization 
with  its  traditions  and  half-tones  and  its  skill  in  mak- 
ing much  of  little,  which  we  may  apply  when  we  re- 
turn home.  The  narrow-minded  and  the  profiteer 
found  us  foolishly  extravagant,  but  the  sounder  peo- 
ple saw  us  as  generous,  bustling,  impulsive  and  genu- 
ine, if  we  were  matter-of-fact,  which  is  compliment 
enough.  Neither  the  French  nor  the  British,  unless 
it  were  a  class — that  class  of  parasites  of  money  in 
time  of  peace,  and  blood  and  money  on  the  body 
politic  in  time  of  war — expected  us  to  bear  their 


472  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

burdens.  On  their  part,  there  was  no  thought  of 
resting  on  their  arms  while  we  charged.  The  Allies 
went  into  the  great  counter-offensive  of  191 8  with 
the  spirit  and  courage  of  youth  regained,  unafraid 
of  the  cost  in  lives. 

Each  one  of  the  atoms  of  the  Expeditionary  Force 
was  so  preoccupied  with  his  work  that  only  time 
will  make  him  realize  to  the  full  the  wonder  of  our 
pilgrimage  and  of  all  that  we  have  wrought  in 
France.  Be  it  at  General  Headquarters,  or  in  the 
offices,  the  camps,  the  stations  and  the  ports  of  the 
S.  O.  S.,  or  with  our  troops  in  their  training  and  in 
their  battles,  the  romance  of  our  activity  on  the 
background  where  we  labored  would  sometimes  occur 
to  tired  men,  and  the  thought  of  being  even  the 
smallest  factor  in  one  of  the  great  movements  of 
history  would  bring  fresh  strength  to  weary  mind 
and  body  to  meet  the  day's  problems. 

America  in  France  was  America  at  its  best,  the 
best  of  our  men  and  women.  I  am  thinking  of  the 
women  of  the  auxiliary  associations.  They  had  their 
jealousies  and  their  grievances,  but  these  were  gradu- 
ally submerged  in  a  common  purpose  as  responsibility 
and  elimination  worked  their  results.  There  is  the 
example  of  a  certain  Y.  M.  C.  A.  woman,  which  is 
illuminating  if  not  strictly  characteristic.  When  she 
first  came  to  France  it  was  easy  to  see  that  she  had 
lived  in  a  little  local  world  in  which  she  thought  well 
of  herself  and  a  good  deal  about  herself.  Her  time 
had  been  given  to  trivial  things  which,  in  her  orbit, 
assumed  grave  importance.  Servants  did  every- 
thing for  her  except  to  breathe  and  complain.  By 
nature,  I  should  say  that  she  was  what  is  called  cat- 


THE  GREAT  PROJECT  REALIZED    473 

tish ;  but  a  few  weeks  of  selling  cigarettes  and  choco- 
late to  the  soldiers  and  of  answering  their  simple 
boyish  questions  had  transformed  her  into  a  cheerful, 
objective  being.  She  had  been  receiving  a  primary 
education  in  the  humanities  at  the  age  of  thirty  in 
the  school  of  Mr.  Carter,  that  remarkable  man, 
who  had  been  the  pioneer  organizer  of  the  Y.  M. 
C.  A.  in  the  trying  early  days,  and  with  a  soldierly 
zeal  and  endurance  continued  on  through  the  later 
days  of  its  widespread,  invaluable  and  difficult  serv- 
ice. The  process  which  wrought  the  change  in  her 
had  been  going  on  among  European  women  for  three 
years.  It  would  have  been  unfortunate,  in  our 
preparation  for  the  future,  to  have  missed  this  course 
of  training  in  self-sacrifice. 

It  was  a  privilege,  not  a  duty,  to  be  in  France  for 
all  except  the  trained  soldiers  and  a  few  specialists, 
whatever  they  paid  for  the  experience.  Those  who 
served  at  home  served  no  less  well,  and  they  deserve 
even  more  praise  as  a  reward  for  what  they  missed. 
Each  day  had  its  reminder  that  it  was  the  other 
"  over  there  "  which  gave  us  our  life  blood.  The 
causes  of  our  accomplishment  go  further  back  than 
our  entry  into  the  war.  They  are  not  alone  in  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  or  in  laws,  or  political 
platforms,  but  in  that  modern  movement  two  or 
three  decades  old;  for,  such  as  a  nation's  character  is 
in  its  men  and  women  in  time  of  peace,  so  it  is  under 
the  acid  test  of  war. 

To  all  the  colleges  and  schools  and  to  all  their 
teachers;  to  every  man  and  woman  who  held  to  the 
ethics  of  service  in  his  occupation,  whether  laborer 
or  millionaire ;  to  those  leaders  who  strove  for  bet- 


474  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

ter  government,  commercial  honesty  and  improved 
commercial  organization;  to  the  pioneers  and  the 
workers  in  trying  to  make  understanding  and  worthy 
citizens  of  the  lowly  of  Europe  who  came  to  our 
doors,  whether  Jew  or  Gentile,  brown-skinned  from 
the  Mediterranean  or  Viking  blond  from  the  North 
Sea ;  to  that  popular  sentiment,  which  never  casts  re- 
flection on  any  man's  origin  or  asks  his  caste ;  to  all 
Americans  with  their  faces  in  the  light  before  the 
war,  as  well  as  to  the  regular  officers,  who  worked 
hard  and  truly  at  their  profession  and  held  cleanly 
to  its  best  traditions,  we  owe  that  revelation  of 
America  in  France  which  should  make  it  unnecessary 
in  the  future  for  the  traveler  to  explain  to  foreigners 
the  meaning  and  aim  of  all  that  was  brewing  in  the 
melting-pot  which  is  called  the  United  States,  neigh- 
bor of  gallant  Canada,  along  a  frontier  which  has 
no  forts. 

When  one  recalls  Spanish-American  war  days,  and 
he  thinks  of  what  might  have  happened  to  us  in  this 
war,  he  must  pay  another  tribute  to  that  modern 
movement  in  the  men  whom  it  brought  to  leadership 
and  to  a  direction  of  policy,  which,  at  the  same  time 
that  it  left  an  expert's  task  to  expert,  gave  us  an  in- 
fluence in  the  world  which  we  may  use  in  keeping 
with  our  ideals.  The  supreme  tribute  is  to  the  man 
who  fights;  to  the  soldier  who,  after  the  war,  would 
hold  all  the  future  in  his  hands.  The  insurance 
system  ought  to  save  his  dependents  from  a  pension 
system  and  himself  from  the  political  activity  of 
veterans'  associations,  which  vote  in  a  block,  in  dis- 
regard of  the  strict  views  of  the  duties  of  citizenship. 

Mothers,  sisters  and  sweethearts  always  wanted  to 


THE  GREAT  PROJECT  REALIZED    475 

know  how  the  men  they  loved  were  cared  for  in 
France.  Three  thousand  miles  are  three  thousand 
miles  when  the  soldier  is  away  from  home.  The  dis- 
tance as  I  have  mentioned  removed  the  sense  of  per- 
sonal touch  that  British,  French  and  Italian  relatives 
have  with  their  kindred  fighting  across  the  Channel, 
or  in  another  province  of  their  own  country;  and  this 
distance  meant  submarine  dangers,  a  long  line  of 
communications  for  our  supplies,  and  our  men  being 
crowded  upon  transports  which  disappeared  over  the 
horizon  on  a  long  absence,  perhaps  never  to  return. 
Mothers  might  be  sure  that  sons  in  France  never 
wanted  for  food,  good  substantial  American  food, 
thanks  to  the  S.  O.  S.  They  might  be  equally 
sure  that  there  were  good  nurses,  good  surgeons 
and  good  hospitals  for  the  sick  and  wounded.  If, 
to  the  French,  soldiering  in  their  own  country,  our 
arrangements  seemed  luxurious,  why,  it  was  only 
right  that  they  should  be  for  men  who  were  en- 
during the  hardships  and  risks  of  battle  three  thou- 
sand miles  from  home.  For  there  were  hardships 
in  face  of  the  enemy  which  might  not  be  glossed 
over.  Such  is  war,  and  especially  in  a  war  where 
all  the  power  and  resource  of  modern  destruction 
were  directed  against  human  flesh.  It  was  a  man's 
work  being  a  soldier  in  France.  There  was  disci- 
pline, too;  and  it  was  good  for  us  that  we  should 
have  it. 

When  he  was  not  in  the  battle  line,  many  a  son 
was  living  a  far  more  regular  and  healthier  life 
than  at  home;  his  means  of  entertainment  were 
more  wholesome  in  that  army  world  than  they  were 
in  many  instances  at  home.    When  he  returned  more 


476  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

than  one  mother  would  exclaim  to  her  boy:  "  How 
strong  and  well  you  look  1  "  All  that  the  funds 
which  the  other  "  over  there  "  supplied  were  being 
used  by  the  auxiliary  associations,  the  Red  Cross,  the 
Y.  M.  C.  A.  and  the  K.  of  C.  to  make  him  feel  at 
home — in  conjunction  with  an  army  which  took  the 
tired  man  at  Blois,  issued  him  a  new  suit  of  clothing 
throughout  and  told  him  he  had  only  to  rest  until 
his  number  was  called.  He  had  a  better  club  around 
at  the  "  Y  "  hut,  where  he  saw  the  "  movies  " — 
where  all  of  us  "  movie  fans  "  went  when  we  had  the 
time — and  where  he  could  read  the  paper  and  see 
the  Sunday  supplements,  than  he  had  in  many  in- 
stances in  his  own  village;  and  there  he  associated, 
as  he  did  in  the  ranks,  on  an  equal  footing  with  the 
millionaires  who  won  attention  by  enlisting  as  pri- 
vates. A  millionaire  counted  as  one  private,  no 
more  and  no  less,  in  the  A.  E.  F.,  with  a  chance  to 
be  promoted  corporal  if  he  were  proved  efficient,  and 
without  having  his  name  appear  in  the  Stars  and 
Stripes,  which  did  not  carry  a  "  What  Society  is 
Doing  "  column. 

We  thank  those  men  in  khaki  whose  rank  was  in 
the  silver  cross  or  the  emblem  of  an  older  faith,  that 
they  wore  under  Bishop  Brent.  They  brought  the 
human  ethics  of  their  calling  at  its  best,  it  seemed 
to  me,  instead  of  dogmatic  instruction,  to  serve  in 
France;  and,  under  fire,  they  were  cool  exemplars  of 
"  the  blood  of  the  martyr  is  the  seed  of  the  church." 
It  was  good  to  see  clergyman  and  priest  working 
under  a  rabbi  or  a  Salvation  Army  chaplain,  all  in 
the  one  purpose  which  the  war  has  made  supreme. 
We  thank  the  men  and  the  women,  and  particularly 


THE  GREAT  PROJECT  REALIZED    477 

the  women,  from  the  home  stage  who  did  the  circuit 
of  the  huts,  bringing  us  the  latest  hits  across  the 
submarine  zone.  They  had  their  reward  in  appre- 
ciative audiences  which  formed  a  laughing  and  clap- 
ping sea  of  khaki,  from  the  boys  who  sat  cross- 
legged  at  the  edge  of  the  platform  to  those  crowding 
in  at  the  rear  door;  and  we  are  grateful,  too,  to  the 
officers  who  tried  to  accomplish  more  rapid  delivery 
of  the  tons  of  letters  from  home. 

Here  was  a  problem  to  break  any  organizer's 
reputation.  When  a  division  was  transferred  from 
billets  in  Champagne  to  the  Saint  Mihiel  sector, 
where  the  regiment  was  sent  into  action,  and  after 
action  to  Alsace,  with  all  the  changes  of  station  sub- 
ject to  orders  that  are  given  on  short  notice,  as  the 
result  of  the  sudden  requirements  of  battle,  it  could 
hardly  be  expected  that  a  letter  for  Captain  Smith  or 
Private  Jones  of  the  Three  Hundredth  Regiment, 
which  arrived  in  France  in  the  course  of  the  rapid 
movement,  would  be  delivered  him  in  the  front  line 
under  a  barrage,  or  even  awaiting  him  at  his  destina- 
tion, or  at  the  dressing  station  if  he  were  wounded. 
War  is  not  a  settled  postal  route,  and  we  had  three 
hundred  thousand  soldiers  a  month  arriving  in 
France  and  divisions  continually  in  transit.  But  the 
mail  service  kept  improving,  and  everything  else  kept 
improving  as  the  millions  which  had  been  hurriedly 
gathered  became  more  and  more  organized. 

The  final  tribute,  the  tribute  which  one  reserves  to 
accompany  that  to  the  soldier  in  his  courage  and  his 
philosophy,  goes  to  the  stalwart  leader  who  found 
the  strength  for  his  task  in  the  inspiration  of  its 
magnitude  and  of  all  the  influences  of  our  democracy 


478  AMERICA  IN  FRANCE 

which  I  have  mentioned.  Otherwise,  no  human  sys- 
tem could  have  borne  the  strain  which  was  his.  An 
army  requires  an  autocrat.  We  needed  a  man  in 
France  who  was  a  combination  of  iron  will,  broad 
views,  the  ability  of  a  great  commander  and  the 
human  impulses  which  we  like,  and  the  man  ap- 
peared. First  of  all  a  soldier,  he  was  more  than  a 
soldier  in  his  comprehension  of  the  requirements  for 
forming  new  soldiers  into  an  efficient  military  ma- 
chine. He  was  sent  to  Europe  to  make  war;  and 
he  prepared  to  make  war  in  no  uncertain  manner. 
He  had  imagination  and  the  force  of  conviction  to 
make  his  visions  come  into  being,  whether  it  was 
the  training  of  combat  divisions,  the  forming  of  a 
staff,  or  the  establishment  of  schools,  or  the  plan  of 
the  S.  O.  S.  which  strong  influences  on  the  European 
side  of  the  Atlantic  opposed  until  time  had  demon- 
strated its  wisdom. 

Inquiry  ever  stands  at  the  roadside  of  accomplish- 
ment. Captious  observers  who  agreed  that  he  had 
proved  himself  an  organizer  might  doubt  if  the 
soldier  from  the  Mexican  border  was  equal  to  the 
command  of  an  immense  force  in  modern  action. 
He  confounded  such  vagrant  skepticism  in  a  single 
action.  Unaffected  by  the  plaudits  for  Saint  Mihiel, 
in  characteristic  prevision,  with  the  task  finished,  he 
took  up  the  next  in  the  direction  of  his  young  army 
which  must  be  developed  and  hardened  out  of  fresh 
divisions  rushed  across  the  Atlantic  on  packed  trans- 
ports until  it  represented  the  full  power  of  the 
nation. 

The  autumn  of  191 8  saw  the  Germans  still  on 
French  soil.    We  might  look  forward  to  hard  fight- 


THE  GREAT  PROJECT  REALIZED    479 

ing  and  to  paying  the  cost  in  blood,  which  we  must 
be  prepared  to  pay,  before  we  drove  the  German 
army  toward  the  Rhine  and  final  defeat  on  German 
soil,  should  the  remaining  German  man-power  still 
be  capable  of  desperate  resistance.  With  the  mighty 
machinery  of  supply  now  formed,  with  the  immense 
forces  of  aeroplanes,  of  tanks  and  artillery  back  of 
our  growing  army  being  assembled  during  the 
winter,  supported  by  a  united  people  who  were 
guided  by  the  inspiration  of  a  cause  whose  irre- 
sistible strength  was  penetrating  into  the  mind  of  a 
baffled  foe  was  written  clear  for  all  to  read — the 
complete  victory  which  civiHzation  required. 

We  came  to  France  without  consideration  of  any 
gain,  which  all  men  might  not  share,  and  with  rev- 
erent appreciation  of  how  bravely  the  Allies  had 
fought  for  four  years  for  the  principles  which  we 
had  had  at  stake.  In  the  light  of  that  thought  we 
did  our  building.  It  was  an  unconquerable  thought; 
one  of  the  greatest  world  thoughts  of  all  time. 


THE  END 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY,  LOS  ANGELES 

COLLEGE  LIBRARY 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


'.   ^  J^ 


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UCLA-College  Library 

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